Through Children's Eyes
by Factorielle
Summary: Zoro and Luffy are attacked by surprise, leaving Sanji and the rest of the crew to deal with the dreadful consequences. [Ingredients: children!Straw Hats, blackmail pictures, manly bonding, and slashy thoughts.]
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: One Piece? Not mine. The idea of Devil Fruits? Not mine. The Gaki Gaki no Mi? Who wants it?  
Characters/Pairings: Straw Hat Pirates. Zoro and Sanji bonding, with hints of potentially-maybe-in-the-far-future slash.  
Timeline: Stuck in the anime timeline (because it's the only way it works) between the Davy Back Fight and the meeting with Aokiji.  
Warning: We have grown up (more or less) people turning into children here. If you don't run away now, please don't act like you haven't been warned.

**Prologue**

"I have good news," Usopp declared as he slammed open the door of the galley. "But I also have very bad news." 

Sanji, who had been staring at the two unconscious forms huddled on the table under a light blanket for the past hour, looked at him blearily. "Shoot."

"They've been turned back to six-year-olds."

Sanji rolled his eyes. Nami, who'd come back with Usopp but apparently didn't know any more than Sanji did, smacked Usopp up the head. "Thanks for pointing that out," she snarled. "Anything we don't know?"

For a moment the sharpshooter looked about to make a whiny comment about how dare she hit the Great Captain Usopp, then he remembered that he had actual information to give.

"Well, it's like that..."

The townspeople had been a lot of help. When he'd got there to explain that he'd found two of his crewmates unconscious and ten years younger than usual, Usopp had expected to get laughed at. Instead, he was the witness to a sharing of meaningful looks and a collective sigh.

The culprit, it turned out, was called Fletan. He was a merman of the halibut variety, arrived there about twenty-three years earlier after having been rejected by his kin for being too nicely-spirited towards humans. The local fishermen, after a few amusing encounters that sounded a lot like Chopper's first meeting with the Straw Hat crew, had finally seen how much use he could be and adopted him as one of them. Fletan, an extremely good-natured and helpful individual, was soon fully integrated in the population, and it seemed that he'd finally found his place in life.

Until, ten years after his arrival, a dreadfully familiar flag was spotted on the horizon. They were raiders, he remembered, detached from the main group and basically free to do whatever they wanted. Which was, he remembered, along the lines of pillage and plunder. He remembered his unhappy childhood, remembered being endlessly abused by those people he'd thought of as brothers, and decided that now that he had found the place and people that had unconditionally accepted him, he would be brave and stand up to the invaders, ready to give up his life if it was what it took to--

"Can you please cut down on the storytelling and give us the _facts_?" Nami interrupted, looking mildly annoyed. Usopp pouted.

"Well, Fletan knew he would never be able to take them all down by himself, so he made a terrible bargain," he said, and paused for dramatic effect. "He ate the Devil Fruit that had been the village's treasure for generations."

"A decades old fruit? Can't have tasted that good," Sanji commented, opening his second pack of cigarettes since they'd docked on this wretched island.

"Devil Fruits always taste bad no matter how fresh they are, cook-_san_," Robin provided, smiling at him. Sanji beamed, and was able to offer to prepare her a fruit salad to wash off the residual taste when Nami coughed meaningfully.

"Back to topic, if you don't mind? So he ate a Devil Fruit."

"Yes," said Usopp. "It turned out to be the Gaki Gaki Fruit."

"The Ga... is that even _possible_?" Nami asked doubtfully as Chopper stared in amazement. Usopp gave a long-suffering nod. "It's a beam, like the Foxy guy? Anyone the beam touches gets turned into a six-year-old."

"Who the hell makes these things anyway?" Sanji asked, rolling his eyes. That was the last thing he needed, having to deal with two brats that were troublesome enough as almost-adults. "At least tell me there's a way to turn them back."

Usopp sulked at him. "I'm not there yet!" he protested, then went back to storytelling mode.

"Of course, the Gaki Gaki Beam was not enough to take care of all the mermen pirates, even though he managed to catch some of them unaware. Despite his and the population's valiant efforts, they soon took possession of the town, and through murder and abuse and tax collection-"

"Was their captain possibly called _Arlong_?" asked a white-faced Nami. Usopp blinked at her in realization. "I... didn't ask," he admitted. "Could have been."

"So they murdered some people, stole all the money, and so on. Spare me the details and move on," she ordered. She looked like she was about to be sick, so Usopp gave up on the tale of terror he'd carefully crafted while coming back from his information hunt and complied.

"They beat Fletan up, but didn't kill him. By the time he was allowed out of the doctor's care, they were gone, and he decided to make things go back to what they used to be. But when he tried to help the fishermen in their work..." Usopp trailed off.

"He found he couldn't swim anymore," Chopper completed, seemingly on the verge of tears.

"He found he couldn't swim anymore," Usopp said dramatically, glaring at Chopper for stealing his line. "It drove him insane."

"Why?" Sanji asked. "I understand he ate the fruit for a bad reason, but he wouldn't be the first one who can't swim..."

"But a merman unable to swim? It must have been hard on him," Robin contemplated. Nami nodded in approval.

"Probably. They never feel good if they can't go swimming at least twice a day. It's no wonder that the guy went mad."

Feeling that he was losing his public's attention, Usopp went back to the story. "Now he lives further inside the grounds. Spends most of his time sleeping, but sometimes he goes back to the coast and attacks everyone he sees."

"And no one has gone to stop him?" Sanji asked in disbelief. It couldn't be fun, finding your husband or your mother reverted to a kid. He couldn't believe no one had taken the matter in their own hands.

"But, but, it's not _his_ fault," Chopper said, tears shining brightly in his eyes. "That's so unfair," he sniffed. Usopp nodded.

"The villagers remember him and what he did to help them, so they leave him in peace. It doesn't happen that often, and the effect wears off after thirty days. So everyone bought children's clothes, and they just wait it off."

Thirty days. _Thirty_ days. Thirty _days_. _Thirty days_. Sanji could see them already, playing and wreaking havoc in _his_ kitchen for a _month_. This was not going to end well, he could tell. But he'd faced worse things. And Nami-_swan_ and Robin-_chwan_ would be so impressed once he proved to them that he could be the perfect father. "Alright," he said, trying to see the good side of things. "What's the good news?"

Usopp looked somewhat embarrassed.

"Uhhh..." said Chopper, like he wanted to say something that he wasn't sure would be well received.

"I rather think that was the good news, cook-_san_," Robin-_chan_ said, smiling sweetly at Sanji. It was almost enough to make him forget that things could actually get worse. 'Almost' was such a terrible word.

"There's a fleet of Marines headed our way," Usopp said, now looking excessively uncomfortable. "They'll be here in four or five hours, and from what the grocer said, their captain is always willing to go a bit out of his way to get his hands on a bounty."

"Oh, good," Nami groaned. "And at the moment, two of our bounty heads are absolutely unable to defend themselves."

"I can take care of Marines, Nami-_swan_," Sanji offered, lighting a cigarette and feeling very cool as he did so. But contrary to what he'd expected, no one in the room seemed really enthusiastic about his suggestion.

"You and whose army?" Usopp asked after a few seconds of tense silence. Sanji turned towards him and glared. At the edge of his vision he saw a Rumble Ball halfway to Chopper's mouth.

"What is that supposed to mean, long-nose?" Sanji sneered. Usopp looked mildly scared, but held his ground.

"It's a FLEET! _Merry_ will never survive a direct confrontation!"

"I can end it before it gets to that!"

"Yeah? One of their snipers gets a lucky shot, we're all going down!" Both of them ignored the sudden burst of fur at their side.

"And what will you do to st-"

"ENOUGH!"

The schoolteacher harmonics in Nami's voice and the loudness of her fist crashing on the table made them both shut up mid-yell. "This is not the time for fighting among ourselves," she said, glaring around and daring them to contradict her. "The log is set. We can leave now. But that choice lays with the captain, not any of us."

They all looked at the children, whose sleep apparently hadn't been disturbed in the slightest. "The captain... is unable to make the decision", said Chopper, gone back to his usual shape but hiding behind Robin in usual Chopper fashion.

"In that case, the first mate is in charge," Robin offered helpfully, her chin resting in her own hands and a third one stirring her cup of coffee. They all looked back to the table. Drool was dripping from the corner of the mouth of the miniature Zoro. No help would be coming from there.

"And if the first mate can't do it?" Nami asked in a dangerously strained voice.

"Chaos," Robin answered with her usual bright smile. There was a collective sigh. For a moment, Nami seemed to consider quitting the crew there and then. Then there was a shuffle, and all the adults in the room froze as Luffy pushed himself to a sitting position.

He blinked sleepily and looked around the room, slowly, like he was trying to remember if he was supposed to know where he was. Having decided he wasn't, he glanced at each of them in turn, apparently unaware that they were all staring back expectantly. The sight of Chopper seemed to puzzle him for a moment, then a huge grin broke on his face as he reached a conclusion.

"Food?" he said hopefully. Nami heaved a loud, long-suffering sigh.

"Everyone who feels that Luffy isn't any less qualified than usual to make a life-or-death decision, raise your hand," Usopp muttered.

More hands were raised than a crew of seven should reasonably possess.


	2. Chapter 1: Out at Sea

**Chapter One: Out At Sea **

Luffy's choice of 'the thrill of the unknown' over 'staying here waiting for things to happen' did not surprise anyone. In other circumstances, Sanji would have protested that his captain was not fully aware of the facts when making his decision, but by the time he was done cooing over the concision of Nami-_san_'s exposition skills, the conversation was wrapped up and Luffy had bounced out of the galley, presumably to explore the ship.

Sanji managed, however, to point out that they still needed to buy food on this island lest they all starve to death before reaching the next one, and Nami conceded that it was acceptable to dedicate two hours to emergency shopping.

"For food," she said, "and clothes."

Sanjistared blankly at her. He knew and fully agreed that it was paramount to the well-being of the crew that Nami-_san_ had a large variety of clothes to chose from in the mornings. A large variety in colors, fabrics, length and tightness was truly a delight to the eyes, especially on hot days. Yet if they were going to run away -a decision he didn't feel so good about, but however you saw it it was captain's orders- it was quite possibly not the time to keep up with Grand Line fashion.

Sensing the general feeling of disbelief, Nami pointed out the window towards a very excited-looking Luffy, whose red sleeveless shirt hung on him like a badly-designed dress. It didn't seem to disturb him in the least that it was the only piece of clothing he was wearing.

The horrible image of a miniature Zoro lounging around deck wearing nothing but his oversized haramaki flashed in Sanji's mind.

"Yes," he approved hurriedly, "they need clothes." Everyone else seemed to agree.

"So... I'll go get the clothes with Usopp." Nami decided. "Robin, Chopper, can you get the food?" There was a collective blink.

"Shouldn't cook-_san_ be on the food-shopping team?" Robin asked calmly. Sanji's heart fluttered at the thought that she specifically wanted to go shopping with him. Nami-_san_ shook her head. Sanji's heart fluttered harder at the thought that she did not want him to go shopping alone with Robin-_chwan_. Finally, _finally_ the two of them were getting to terms with their feelings for him. He only hoped they would agree to share his affections.

"Sanji-_kun_ can make you a list," Nami said, shaking her head, "but I don't want him to go to the market and risk getting caught in a cooking competition or something. We're running on limited time here."

"But, Nami-_san_..." Sanji tried to plead. He knew there was no making her change her mind when she got that decided, matter-of-fact expression on her face, but he tried anyway. He trusted Robin-_chan_'s judgement, but for all her beauty and intelligence she was not a cook, and he was worried that some shameless shopkeeper would misguide her into buying second- or third-class ingredients.

Nami-san gave him a disappointed, I-expected-better-of-you look. Sanji tried to console himself by thinking that as a first-rate cook, he would be able to make something perfectly acceptable even if the ingredients were not prime quality, and went to look for a piece of paper on which to write down as many detailed instructions as he could.

He was too caught up in his disappointment to notice that he was being left alone on the ship with the two children. One of which was nowhere to be seen when Sanji glanced out to check on his whereabouts.

* * *

Luffy had been temporarily distracted from his hopes for food by the more immediate appeal of exploring his new surroundings. He hadn't recognized any of the people in the room when he woke up, but they all looked nice and he wasn't worried. Plus, the girl with the orange hair had told him that they were on an adventure, and he'd _always_ wanted to go on an adventure. So when she asked him if he wanted to leave the island, of course he said yes.

After that, they'd all stopped paying attention to him, and he'd taken the chance to slip out of the room and into paradise.

It was a ship. The flag was a bit weird, but it was still a pirate flag so that meant he was on a pirate ship and the people in that room were _pirates_.

He'd never met real pirates before. This was _cool_. And the ship was cool too, with all the rooms and the stairs and the things to climb and the trees and the hammocks, he'd always wanted to sleep in a hammock. Briefly he regretted that Ace wasn't there, but the thought went away as soon as it got there. Ace was _mean_, and just because he was three years older didn't mean he knew everything better. And Luffy was sure that Ace had never set foot on a pirate ship, so when he came back he could tell him everything about it and his brother would be so _jealous_--

"LUFFY! LUFFY YOU DAMN BRAT, WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?"

Woops. Maybe he should have told them he was going out. Makino was never happy with him when he forgot to tell her where he was going. He hoped Makino knew he was going on an adventure. She got worried when she didn't see him for a few days.

* * *

After a bout of possibly unnecessary but definitely satisfying shouting, Sanji finally found his captain trying to climb inside one of the hammocks of the boys' quarters. Considering how high they were set, and how short he currently was, this was a rather entertaining sight. It took no more than two minutes for the boy to get hopelessly tangled in the fabric, and Sanji reluctantly went to help.

"Thank you, _ossan_," Luffy said, smiling brightly up at him when he was freed.

Sanji's teeth clenched so hard that his cigarette was neatly cut off and fell down. He crushed it under his foot without even looking, busy as he was trying to glare Luffy down from the assumption that he was old, dammit. "My name," he said, distantly wondering if whacking his captain over the head would really qualify as fighting with his hands, "is Sanji. And I'm nineteen, and not an old man. Remember that."

He must have been making a scary face, for Luffy blinked at him and nodded silently.

"Right. Now first things first. Here." Sanji held up the crew's symbol in front of Luffy's face. The boy blinked again, then smiled at him.

"Is this for me?"

_Oh._

Before departing, Usopp had more or less explained that the kids would have lost all their memories past the age of six. Despite that Sanji had never expected Luffy to forget about his hat. Suddenly the only piece of headgear in the world that a whole pirate crew would have protected with their lives seemed like nothing more than an old piece of junk. It was disturbing. And not a pleasant feeling at all.

"Ah, never mind," Sanji said, letting his hand fall back at his side. He'd store the hat somewhere on the shelves of the galley. It would be the first thing Luffy looked for when he went back to normal. For now, he forced himself to smile. "Weren't you hungry?"

He refused to congratulate himself for the smooth change in topic because really, the promise of food could distract Luffy from just about anything. The boy followed him into the galley in relative silence, and then Sanji was faced with the slight problem posed by Zoro, who was still sleeping peacefully on the table of the galley. It was solved by carefully wrapping him up in the blanket he was covered with -Sanji did not want to know what he was or was not wearing underneath thank you very much- before going back to the boys' quarters and dropping him unceremoniously on the couch.

There was not a stir from the sleeping lump. Yes, this was Zoro alright.

Sanji let Luffy babble happily about all the adventures he intended to have as he struggled to find an acceptable meal to make with the leftover food, and, with a timing that could only be explained by him and Robin-_chan _being soulmates, had nothing left to do but let the stew simmer for a while when she and Chopper came back.

Nami and Usopp came a bit late on schedule, with big grins on their faces and more clothes in plastic bags than two children could possibly wear in a month. Sanji's confusion as to why Nami-_san_ would want to buy so many clothes for people who were generally unconcerned about their appearance was dissolved when he saw Usopp coming back from the storeroom with a picture dial in his hand.

Ah. Blackmail was such a sweet word when it came from Nami-_san_.

Leaving dock was not as smooth as usual, considering the absence of the muscle-head and Luffy's constant inquiries as to what they were doing? And now? And _now_? Ooooh, the anchor, it's so _big! SUGEI_! The tanuki turned into a gorilla!

They retreated to the galley as soon as Going Merry was finally headed towards the next island, with Chopper doing his best to fit in the currently available space of Luffy's mind the information that he was, in fact, a reindeer-man. By the time the boy seemed to have grasped the concept, he'd been manhandled by Nami into a pair of loose black trousers and a grey sweatshirt that was very obviously a size too big and made him look even smaller than he actually was.

But, Sanji had to admit as he watched Nami-_san_ ruffle her new doll's hair, it also made him rather cute. Which was a word he'd rather not have had to associate with the man he'd chosen to follow to the end of the world and beyond.

* * *

Zoro woke up feeling slightly ill. The room around him was moving - not much, but he could still feel it. It was dark, but not exactly pitch black: a ray of greyish light was coming from above, and he could make out a shape that went all the way to what he supposed was an opening.

Well. Maybe he'd feel better if he went outside. Climbing the stepladder didn't prove too hard despite the lack of light, and the hatch opened easily when he pushed it. Good.

It was dawn, and he was at sea.

He was rather sure, however, that he hadn't been at sea when he'd fallen asleep. In fact, he seemed to remember that he'd been propped up against a tree at the time. And certainly not wearing bright red overalls on an equally bright yellow T-shirt. Uh. Strange.

He wandered cautiously around what looked like a very small, very lame ship. Who the hell kept trees--

"Hey!"

Zoro whipped around and stared as a boy who looked about his age waved at him. "Who the hell are you?" he asked defensively.

"Monkey D. Luffy!" the boy answered brightly. "And you're Zoro, right?"

He looked so very happy to have remembered those two syllables that Zoro could only nod in mild bewilderment.

"You're finally awake! You slept all through dinner yesterday, and then the woman with funny hair had to dress you up while you were asleep so you wouldn't catch a cold during the night-- oh, _you_ have funny hair too!" Luffy went on excitedly, almost dancing around Zoro, which did not help with his slightly sick feeling. Zoro was about to push Luffy away when suddenly the boy froze, sniffed the air hopefully, grabbed Zoro's wrist and took off at high speed.

"It's breakfast time! Finally! Come on!"

There wasn't much else to do but follow.

The boy dragged him all the way to the a door that to Zoro looked like all the others, and let go of his wrist to yank the door open.

The next second, he was flying the other way. Zoro blinked as he heard a loud splash, then again as a man dressed all in black ran out of the room and dived after Luffy.

It wasn't more than a minute before they were both back on deck, the tall guy awkwardly patting a coughing Luffy on the back, and Zoro felt mildly disgusted at the display. At his age, couldn't the boy swim? What a weakling.

"Oi, Sanji, what happened?" someone asked from... up. Zoro tilted his head to see that someone with a freaky long nose was leaning down from the top of the mast.

"Accident," the blond guy apparently named Sanji said, shrugging, as the other one climbed down.

"You kicked him off." It wasn't a question. Zoro stared. _Kicked_? Luffy had flown all the way over the figurehead. Was it even possible to kick that hard? Zoro was _strong_, and he certainly couldn't.

Yet. If it was possible, he would be able to do it someday.

* * *

"Shouldn't have burst in like that," Sanji mumbled, slightly embarrassed. He'd reacted on instinct really, only realising what he'd done after Luffy was overboard. Everyone on the crew knew that entering the galley in the hour or so after dawn was dangerous, because Sanji was usually working on breakfast, or getting a head start on lunch, and it was the only time of day during which he just wouldn't be disturbed. Unless there was a crisis. Or someone was terminally sick. Or had a potentially deadly injury (except for Zoro, for whom potentially deadly injuries were a weekly occurrence anyway).

Everyone but the two brats, one of which had almost drowned and the other was staring at him stupidly from the entrance of the galley.

Well, now they'd know.

"I couldn't move!" Luffy said, looking like a drowned rat in his oversized clothes and sounding slightly panicky. "I tried, but it was too hard and I couldn't..."

The sound was drowned out as Sanji and Usopp looked at each other in dawning comprehension. Usopp's face turned decided, and he walked up to Sanji and Luffy, crouched down, and experimentally pulled at Luffy's cheek.

Which extended far beyond what was normal for anyone who wasn't Luffy. And the kid looked like he had no clue what the whole thing was about. Sanji and Usopp looked back at each other.

"I'm not done with breakfast," Sanji said quickly as Usopp was opening his mouth, and got up and back to the galley, deliberately paying no attention to the stunned Zoro. Usopp glared after him and finally noticed Zoro, who was coming down the stairs with a suspicious look.

He managed not to burst out laughing. A single picture of him, with the clothes Nami had put him in the previous night and that expression on his face, would be enough to blackmail Zoro into being Usopp's personal bodyguard for life. A shame Nami had kept hold of the dial. Probably she wanted Zoro to be _her_ bodyguard. That, or give her even more money.

He looked back at Luffy, who was pulling at his face as experimentally as Usopp had just done and clearly enjoying it very much. Oh well. Usopp was the one who was good with tales.

"Luffy," he said, "do you know what a Devil Fruit is?"


	3. Chapter 2: Taming the Beast

Luffy didn't take the news badly. In fact, he took the news with an enthusiastic 'SUGOI' and eyes that glinted with mischief. Then he spent the first half of breakfast checking whether Robin and Chopper were as elastic as he was, until Robin explained in gentle tones but with a dangerous gleam in her eyes that all Devil Fruits powers were different, before a disembodied hand caught his collar from behind and dragged him away from her.

When he was done marvelling at the coolness of _her_ powers, Luffy spent the other half of breakfast checking the limits of his new-found abilities. Pulling at his face. Making his arm extend all the way across the galley and back. Extending his neck to the other end of the table just long enough to snatch a loaf of bread from Usopp's plate.

He was so enthusiastic about it that he never noticed the quiet conversation being held between the adults about how he hadn't even thought to ask when he could have eaten that fruit. Which was a good thing. The previous day, when the brat was finally sleeping, Sanji had told the rest of the crew that Luffy hadn't recognized his own hat. It was soon decided that attempting to explain to them who and how old they were was the least troublesome thing to do. So the hat, the three swords and their matching earrings had been safely hidden away in the depths of the storeroom.

As safe as anything could be in Luffy's presence. The third time a stray rubber hand almost knocked a pile of plates to the ground, Sanji declared that breakfast was over and that everyone of the male persuasion was invited to get the hell away from his kitchen. He'd hoped to be able to spend some time with the ladies, but Robin-_chan_ was on watch duty and Nami-_san_ sweetly announced that she intended to catch up on a heavy backlog of undrawn maps, and that any disturbance -pointed look at the two kids- would be heavily punished.

The remaining crewmates glanced at one another. This time Usopp was faster. "ARGH!" he groaned. "My I'll-die-if-I-stay-in-children's-presence-too-long illness is acting up again!"

"REALLY?"

It took a grand total of ten seconds for Usopp to rush off and a Chopper in full doctoring mode to follow him, which landed Sanji in the galley with lunch to get started on and two brats (both of which would probably find a way to sink Merry if they were left unattended for half an hour) to keep busy.

While he had the firm conviction that his was an art better learned through observation than explanation, it was still the only thing he could think of to distract them from whatever mayhem they would come up with to incur Nami-_san_'s wrath. He mentally begged each and every one of the kitchen instruments that were probably about to be horribly defiled for forgiveness, then turned to the sitting kids with a forced smile.

"So, you two want to learn to make cookies?"

Luffy's face broke into a large grin, although Sanji was rather sure that his brains had skipped the word 'learn' and jumped straight to 'cookies'. But it was a start, at least.

Zoro scowled.

"Cooking," he spat with as much contempt as he could muster, "is for _girls_."

* * *

Nami-_san_ was so beautiful when she was angry. It was only regrettable that she was angry at Sanji, and that him being on his knees before her didn't seem to do anything to calm her down. She tapped her foot impatiently.

"It was an accident?" he tried for the second time today, and looked up at her to see how well that went.

Not well at all.

"Sanji-_kun_," she said in a voice that was usually reserved to Luffy's stupidest antics and didn't bode well for its recipient, "Chopper says you tried to _strangle_ him."

Which, when he thought about it, might have been a bit on the excessive side; but he couldn't be expected to _think_ when the two things he held dearest to his heart were being insulted that deliberately by the stupid marimo-head. As far as he was concerned, the moron deserved what he'd got. More or less.

"I'm sorry?" he offered nevertheless, because it seemed the only thing to say that wouldn't make her even angrier.

"Right," she said, rolling her eyes. On one hand it hurt that she didn't believe him. On the other hand, it felt good that she knew him so well that she could tell when he was lying. "Well, it's interesting to know that you think Zoro is worth using your hands on," she dropped airily, and he froze in horror. That was not it. That was not it at all. It was about defending his art and the honor of ladies all over the world. It had nothing to do with the braindead bastard, and it hardly qualified as _fighting_ anyway. He opened his mouth to say so--

"PIRATES!" Usopp yelled, bursting in. Sanji blessed him for the interruption. "Pirates are coming!" Nami glared at him.

"Usopp, that joke was old even _before_ I met you," she said in a clipped, dangerous voice. He blinked at her.

"No, I mean, really. Robin said to tell you there's a ship coming in from starboard." Nami closed her eyes. Sanji watched her lips move as she silently counted to ten, then followed her out to check on the situation.

* * *

"They're waving something," Sanji said, straining his eyes to see what it was. Usopp adjusted his goggles.

"Bounty posters. Hey, that looks like--"

"Let me guess. Monkey D. Luffy, Roronoa Zoro and Nico Robin."

"Well, yes, actually. So, uh, what do we do?" Usopp asked Nami uncomfortably. Sanji crossed his fingers under the railing.

"I'd really rather we didn't engage in fights at the moment," she answered to his utter disappointment. "The Marines might be after us, we can't afford to let them catch up at the moment. So let's jus-"

"PIRATES!" Luffy screamed in delight, bouncing across deck. Where the hell did he come from? Last time Sanji remembered seeing him was in the galley--

--right before Chopper had burst back in the galley to get his medical supplies and seen that unfortunate little scene. This meant that Luffy had been _left alone in the kitchen_. The day was getting worse by the second, and it wasn't even ten in the morning.

"Look, look! They're pirates! They're coming closer! Can we stop? CAN WE? Please, please, I want to stop, I want to see the other pirates--" Luffy went on, visibly unaware of the long-suffering faces everyone around him was wearing.

"So, uh, what do we do?" Usopp repeated unsteadily, knowing the answer already.

"We stop," Nami answered, holding her face in her hand like she was about to cry. Sanji moved closer to offer her mental -and physical if she so wished- support, but she shrugged his hand away from his shoulder. "Captain's orders. Sanji-_kun_," she added, "I'm counting on you to take care of them."

Sanji decided the day was looking up.

* * *

The guy was _mad_, Zoro decided as he sulked through the tiny doctor's unwanted attentions. Who just _attacked_ someone over something so stupid? He considered telling the others, but they probably knew it already. Probably were all as mad as him, even. It certainly seemed like it. He really needed to find a way to get off this ship.

"Your neck will be alright, but I think you have a small case of sea-sickness," the reindeer guy told him. "It happens with people who haven't been at sea much, but you should get used to it soon enough. In the meantime, it would help to stay outside." That was one piece of advice that Zoro had no trouble following, and he went out as soon as he was released.

He came on the deck to find that another ship was coming closer, and peered at it curiously. Maybe he could find a way to switch ships while no-one was looking. Anyone else had to be saner than those people, and maybe he could even get them to bring him back to land. At the moment most of the crew was on deck, talking calmly among themselves while Luffy bounced all around them, and visibly not paying attention to the ship that was getting dangerously closer.

"Oi!" someone from the other ship called, voice smug and laden with alcohol despite the early hour. "You gonna fight at all? Where are your bounty heads, Straw Hat Pirates?"

Bounties? Zoro didn't know any of those people had bounties. That made them a bit more interesting. But not any less insane.

"Currently unavailable," the stupid cook said almost distractedly, all his attention focused on lighting a cigarette. "But don't worry, I'm sure I can keep you entertained." He jumped with the last word, and next second was standing on the railing of the other ship, apparently not noticing how unstable his position was.

_Totally mad_, Zoro thought while standing still, eyes wide as he watched twenty pirates attack the blond with loud screams and edged weapons. This was going to be quick and bloody-- but the first sword hit thin air. The cook had leapt to a handstand on one of the attackers' faces and moved around, long legs impossibly split and kicking down his opponents wherever they came from.

Zoro noticed someone aiming a pistol at the cook from a distance, and almost screamed out a warning, but his mouth was barely open that the long-nose had raised and lowered a slingshot; when Zoro looked back the man had dropped the pistol and was running in a small circle, holding his hand and screaming.

And now the cook was standing up, hands in his pockets, dodging some weapons and breaking others with impossible kicks, quick and powerful and precise and Zoro had never imagined it was even possible to be that strong.

* * *

Lunch came and went without trouble. Luffy squealed about Sanji's strength with an enthusiasm that was almost, but not quite, embarrassing. Even Zoro, who hadn't spoken a word since the fight, was looking at him with something that looked suspiciously like awe. Sanji didn't mind much. He was in an excellent mood after fighting out his frustration and anger at the green-haired brat -the opposing pirates had probably not deserved that much, at least not the last kick that had opened a very large breach in the hull of their ship.

Oh well, if as Nami-_san_ suspected the Marines were after them, those pirates would be rescued soon enough. And assuming anyone in there had had a bounty -Sanji hadn't noticed anyone he would have deemed worthy of one, but he tended not to pay too much attention when he fought against a group- that might even be enough to get the Marines off their back. It was a good thing no matter how you saw it, and even better, Usopp seemed to have recovered from his illness and spent the best part of the afternoon narrating the exploits of the Great Captain Usopp to a more (Luffy, excited and gullible) or less (Zoro, bored and sullen) attentive audience.

Most of these stories sounded a lot like the adventures of Straw Hat Luffy, but Sanji, content with not having to pay attention to the kids anymore, didn't say a word about it as he went back to the kitchen and worked in blissful solitude.

It was a few hours after dinner, and Zoro was too excited to sleep. There was light and the sound of female voices coming from the 'secret passage' that the long-nose (Usopp, he mentally corrected, telling himself that it was probably better if he remembered their names) had told him was not to be opened under any circumstance.

Said Usopp was fast asleep and snoring in a hammock while Zoro and Luffy both had a half of the couch and their own blanket. It was comfortable enough, but no matter how hard Zoro clenched his eyes he couldn't seem to fall asleep. It sucked. Usually he could could do it anytime anywhere, but the slightly ill feeling in his stomach wasn't gone yet, and he didn't know what to do.

Just laying there doing nothing was stupid, he decided. And he was bored.

He got up, climbed the stepladder, and headed towards the light.

* * *

Sanji was finishing up the dishes when the door of the galley opened on a miserable-looking Zoro. Usually, such an intrusion at this time of night would have been a direct threat to the crew's wine rack, but at the moment Zoro was not a threat to anything, except perhaps Sanji's sanity. 

"Can't sleep?" he asked, putting the last plate away. The answer was nothing but a grunt, but by that time provider's instinct and memory had already kicked in. Milk in the fridge, honey in the pantry. Sanji didn't remember exactly what else the old man had put in the mixture when he woke up at night --screaming and sweating and _hungry_ despite having eaten a few hours before-- but he was good enough to make up his own recipe on the spot. Roasted saffron, cardamom seeds, ground almonds and pistachios. Warm and nourishing.

At first Zoro did nothing to acknowledge the mug of warm milk that was put in front of him, but as soon as Sanji turned away he grabbed it and sipped at it greedily.

There was nothing left that Sanji needed to do for the evening, but it wasn't hard to find something he could do, rather than just stay there waiting for the kid to finish his drink and hopefully go back to sleep. The store-bought bread they'd picked up was nothing exceptional, and getting stale faster than it should have. Maybe the ladies would enjoy freshly baked bread in the morning, he decided, and grabbed flour and his thriving leaven from the pantry.

It wasn't so bad now that his bad mood was gone, he decided as he kneaded the dough. He'd always enjoyed staying late in the kitchen while mostly everyone was asleep, ever since his first year on the Baratie, when he'd started teaching himself to cook after he was done with his chores. The rare occasions when Zoro had stayed in the galley after stealing his booze -generally because it was too agitated and/or noisy outside- tended to put Sanji on edge, even when the other man was dead silent in his drinking. But now he could hear the occasional clink of the mug on the table, and from the corner of his eye saw the brat get up and head straight to the pan for a refill. It was a small victory, but still enjoyable - and potential taunting material for later, when Zoro_ remembered_. Still, Sanji was comfortable, and starting to think that while the idiot was still an insufferable brat, he wasn't as bad as his adult counterpart.

"You're an idiot," the kid said behind him, conversationally.

_So I'm starting to believe_, Sanji thought, forcing himself not to stop his regular kneading. Alright, so Zoro was still Zoro regardless of his age. And Sanji wasn't going to kick him out of his kitchen right this second because he'd committed enough violent acts against children today. Even if the child in question was deliberately being an annoying asshole.

"What makes you say that?" he asked as calmly as possible. If he was going to get insulted, he would at least know why.

"You're strong," Zoro said, and that almost made Sanji stop, because Zoro admitting to that with so little reluctance was plain weird. "But you're not the captain."

A few seconds of silence followed the statement. Obviously, Sanji thought, this Zoro hadn't yet learned that strength wasn't everything. Not that the adult Zoro had fully assimilated the lesson, but at least he knew enough not to make that kind of disturbing statement.

It wasn't the kind of conversation Sanji wanted to have with Zoro, whatever his age happened to be. There were things he didn't care to talk about, like how a confident grin, the pointless spilling of blood and a splash of water had forced him to reconsider the way he'd lived his life for the past ten years. Or how a carelessly tossed "I don't care about the story" had sealed his decision to remain with this captain, this crew, for as long as he could, because nothing but absolute loyalty could be worth this absolute faith. Luffy's definition of _nakama_ was something that had to be experienced to be understood. No explanation could begin to describe it. So Sanji didn't even try, and made an attempt at logic instead.

"I'm the cook," he pointed out, putting his dough in an oiled bowl. Zoro snorted.

"That's lame."

Sanji closed his eyes and counted to twenty rather faster than he should have as he washed his hands. He couldn't kill the brat. Neither Nami-_san_ nor Luffy would be happy with him if he did. And Chopper would probably have a lecture ready about murdering innocent (yeah, right) children in cold blood. So instead of disgracing himself by grabbing a knife and stabbing the moron, Sanji lit a cigarette and went to sit in front of Zoro.

"You think so?" he asked with a slight smirk. Zoro nodded, looking as defiant as ever. "But I notice you finished your drink before you started insulting me," the cook finished smugly. Zoro huffed and let go of his two-handed hold on the empty mug, the hint of a blush on his cheeks. Sanji grinned.

"I like what I do," he said. "And I'm very good at it. Why would I want to be captain?" Zoro's expression turned to a pout, making Sanji wish he had a picture dial under his hand right that moment. Roronoa Zoro _pouted_. Oh, the blackmail material. As it was, he very carefully committed the expression to memory for later use.

"_I_ would want to be captain," the boy mumbled, visibly embarrassed. Not for the first time, Sanji wondered how Luffy had managed to convince this thickhead to join him. He'd always chalked it up to Luffy's personal magic, but maybe he'd ask, when they were back to normal. Just for curiosity's sake.

"Why?" he asked, rolling his eyes. "That's your ambition? Being the big boss?"

"I'm going to be the strongest man in the world!" Zoro answered heatedly. _Man_, Sanji noticed. _Not swordsman_. Apparently that had come later.

"And what does that have to do with who's captain?" he asked, pulling lazily on his cigarette. The brat looked at him like he didn't understand the question. Which was probably the case.

"You really think brute strength is enough to get people to follow you?" he prodded further, raising his visible eyebrow.

"Sure," Zoro said, shrugging. "Once you've beaten them up, they know who's boss."

"And you go to sleep every night wondering which of your crewmates is going to work up the nerve to try to murder you in your sleep," Sanji completed. "It's possible, I guess. Just not very enjoyable."

The child seemed to ponder the thought for a moment, then yawned widely.

"Cover your mouth when you do that," Sanji chided, and was immediately horrified at how fatherly he'd just sounded. Talking to Roronoa fucking Zoro. This whole thing was getting to him. If he listened hard enough, he could almost hear his sanity dripping out of his brain.


	4. Chapter 3: Questions You Can Answer

As devoted as she was to her captain, Nami hadn't taken long, after meeting him, to set up mental filters that told her, according to a few choice keywords, whether what he was saying was worth listening to or not, and she strongly suspected that the rest of the crew (with the possible exception of Chopper) had done the same. Adjusting the filters when Luffy had managed to get himself turned into a kid hadn't been a hard task.

So it was by complete chance, after she'd tuned him out to eat her breakfast in peace, that she caught the words "separate himself in dozens of pieces". Mildly curious about this rather unusual topic, she forced himself to pay attention to what he was saying.

"and he had that big red nose, like a clown but it was his real nose, and"

Frowning, Nami looked at the others. Only Chopper seemed to be paying him any attention, and he apparently hadn't noticed anything strange. But of course, he wouldn't have.

"Luffy," she asked sweetly, "what are you talking about?"

He beamed at her. "I had a COOL dream last night!"

"About a guy with a red nose who could separate his body parts?"

He nodded enthusiastically. "Yup! You were in my dream too, Nami! And there was someone who looked like Zoro, too. But older."

Nami bit her lower lip. She hoped it wasn't what she thought, but how could it not be, if Luffy had dreamt of Zoro's adult form?

"And what happened in your dream?"

"I don't remember," he pouted. "Stuff happened, but I forgot when I woke up. It was cool though."

Nami sighed, and only then realized that everyone else had started paying attention, even Zoro who was very unsubtly pretending not to be listening.

"Nami-san? Is there something wrong?"

She shook her head and smiled up at him. "Nothing," she lied. "But I need to talk to all the grown-ups after breakfast."

* * *

"It makes sense," Usopp declared when she was done telling them about her suspicions. "If they're supposed to go back to normal after thirty days, the memories can't have disappeared, right? They've just been locked away, or something, and they're filtering out in their dreams." Nami opened her mouth to shut him up, then closed it. It _did_ make sense. But it made things more complicated, even if at the moment Luffy just took them as Mystery Dreams. That, plus the fact that neither kid remembered getting on _Merry_... sooner or later they were going to start asking questions.

"Should we tell them the truth?" Robin asked. Sometimes Nami was a bit jealous of how calm the other woman could remain in all circumstances, how she always kept herself distant enough from the problems not to be directly involved in them. She shook her head.

"Luffy already jumps up and down in excitement every time someone mentions the word 'pirate'. Is it really a good idea to tell him that he is technically the captain here?" Gods, she wanted to be done with that whole stupid thing. In less than forty-eight hours she'd taken enough pictures to blackmail Zoro for the rest of his life, not that she really needed to considering how bad he was with numbers, and how easy to manipulate. There was no more profit to be made from the situation, and now it was nothing more than a pain. _Captain and first mate_, she thought wearily. Trusted_ nakama_, reliable (when it really mattered, at least) friends, and yet a permanent thorn in her side.

"It will certainly answer all the questions they may have," Robin pointed out, "no matter how hard it is to believe."

"And telling them that they are actually grown-ups might increase their sense of responsibility," Chopper offered, then frowned. "Maybe."

"If there's any chance it will make them less annoying..." Sanji-_kun_ trailed off. It amused Nami to no end, how bothered he seemed to be by the whole thing. Sure, even she was mildly put out by the way they always seemed to land themselves in trouble when she wasn't looking, but now all there had to do was wait it out. Yet Sanji-_kun_ kept acting like it was the end of the world. Though maybe it was just that he couldn't kick Zoro anymore because of the unfair advantage.

She looked at Usopp, who shrugged. No support there. Very well.

"Alright," she decided. "Usopp is telling them."

"HEY! Why me?" the sharpshooter asked, grimacing.

"Because Nami-_san_ says so!" Sanji-_kun_ protested. Nami smiled. His constant pampering could get annoying, but the unwavering support could come in handy.

* * *

"And what am _I_?" Zoro asked almost indignantly after some long and tedious explanations. Nami could tell neither of them really believed what they'd been told, but Luffy definitely enjoyed the thought of actually being a badass pirate captain. As expected. 

"A moron," Sanji-_kun_ muttered under his breath.

"You're the first mate," Chopper said. "The captain's second," he explained in answer to the blank look Zoro was giving him. That at least the green-haired kid seemed to understand, because his previously sullen face broke into a very familiar, very stupid grin as he looked at Sanji-_kun_.

"Eh, that means I'm stronger than you," he bragged, and Nami suddenly wondered how everyone was going to survive the rest of the month. But surprisingly, Sanji-_kun_ didn't snap. He seemed to ignore the statement for a moment as he pulled on his cigarette, then finally looked back at Zoro.

"I don't know," he admitted, and Nami knew she wasn't the only one whose eyes widened with surprise at the fact that he hadn't just kicked Zoro for that, unfair advantage be damned. The two of them tended to let their testosterone get the better of them at the worst of times, and it was hard to believe that either would be able to restrain themselves enough to admit that they were more or less equally matched. "But here's what we can do: the moment you're back to normal, we can have it out. You and me, right here on the deck, once and for all."

"Errrr, no," Usopp interfered, "Not on the deck. You're going to kill _Merry_ if you do that." Sanji spared him a glare for interrupting, but shrugged. Nami entirely gave up on the hopeful thought that he had any sort of self-restrain where Zoro was concerned.

"Then on the next island. Doesn't matter. But you're making the choice now, brat. Here and now, you're going to tell me whether you really want to find out. No one will think any less of you if you don't, but I won't have any more of that bullshit about who's stronger than who. Got it?"

Zoro gulped and nodded, his eyes wide as he stared at Sanji. Nami watched him intently. This was the perfect occasion to check which of her two hypotheses about Zoro and common sense was the right one. Had they simply never been acquainted, or...

"So?" Sanji asked, and punctuated by lighting up yet another cigarette, without ever looking away from Zoro's eyes. "Your answer? Yes or no."

It felt like an eternity, with everyone's eyes fixed on the two of the them, but finally Zoro lowered his head, just enough to break the connection. "No," he said - reluctantly, spitefully, but still he said it. Very clearly the Zoro they knew _had_ known common sense at some point, and outgrown it.

* * *

Later that day, Sanji was the witness of a show he hadn't expected to enjoy so soon. If there was something that he liked seeing as much as people eating good food, it was people trying to say 'no' to his beautiful, wilful Nami-_san_. He'd seen it happen more times than he could recall, but no matter how stubborn they were, or how hard they tried, she always got her way in the end. It was infinitely satisfying to watch.

He leaned on the railing and watched the scene under him with no small amount of amusement. The two brats were putting on a pretty good fight, although it soon became clear that in this instance Zoro was the leader and Luffy was only going along with it out of the sort of loyalty that instantly grew between children facing an authority figure. Every now and then, Zoro would glance up at Sanji, his eyes asking for just a moment of distraction, the tiniest chance to get away. Sanji ignored him. There was no way he'd let them escape Nami-_san_'s authority.

"So you're telling me that you're scared of hot water and soap?" she asked sweetly, which surprised Sanji somewhat. Using the s-word was usually her last resort, the joker that worked on Zoro like 'never' worked on Luffy: every single fucking time, without fail, so expectably that it was almost cheating.

Zoro glared harder at her, bit his lower lip, but didn't take the bait. Sanji raised an eyebrow and seriously considered the possibility that the guy had actually become stupider as he grew up.

Nami-_san_ sighed, raised her hands in the air, and for a moment Sanji wondered if her tenacity had finally met its match in a pair of stubborn, idiotic six-years-old. He'd have to beat them up, if that was the case. "Fine," she said, rolling her eyes dramatically. "after all, _I_'m not the one forfeiting my dinner for a week."

An iron lock clamped on Sanji's stomach. Through a grey mist he saw Luffy's eyes widen in something like horror, and absently wondered if his own face reflected the expression. It probably did.

"But--" Luffy started, whining slightly and pouting up at her in what was probably the cutest expression he could muster.

"No buts. Either the two of you take your bath _whenever I tell you to_, or you both skip dinner all week. It's your choice." She was not bluffing, Sanji realised. She fully intended to make good on her threat. She intended to make _him_ refuse to give them food.

Between his adoration for Nami-_san_ and his duty to the crew -to every living being on the damn planet, even- the choice was painful, but easy. The real problem was that he didn't want to go up directly against her. But challenging her authority by giving them food secretly was out of the question, and he refused to lie to her anyway.

There wasn't much of a choice. He waited until she'd stomped off before moving from his spot on the railing, and by the time he'd walked down the stairs the brats had scampered off, but they didn't directly matter at the moment. It was with trepidation that he entered the storeroom, where his goddess was sitting and making corrections on a map, her face tight with concentration.

"Nami-_san_." She glared up at him, then her expression softened into something that was almost a smile. She raised an eyebrow, silently asking what he wanted. She was so beautiful, it almost broke his heart to confront her. But it couldn't be helped.

"I will give them food," he said simply, looking straight at her. She blinked in surprise.

"Of course! They can have breakfast and lunch with everyone. But we can't afford to let them have their way over something like that, or it'll be chaos within a week. We need to have a handy punishment."

He understood that, of course. He'd seen countless kids on the Baratie who just wouldn't listen to their parents, and they had been worse disasters than most pirates. There needed to be _something_ to keep them under control somehow. But--

"Not with food," he told her. "Never with food. I won't allow that."

She frowned slightly. "Sanji-_kun_, it's not like I intend to make them starve."

Of course not. She would never be so cruel, not to a child, not even if said children happened to be Zoro and Luffy. But if they went to bed on an empty stomach, and there was a storm, or an attack, or _something_, it could turn out to be the one meal between life and death by starvation. The one fate he would never, ever wish on anyone. He understood that the chance of that happening was so small it was laughable to even consider the possibility, but it was not something about which he could think rationally. Nami-_san_ didn't understand, of course. For her sake, he hoped she never truly would. Even if at the moment it meant that he had to hold her gaze without flinching, to become the prey of the game he'd been watching just minutes earlier. And the two morons he was doing that for would probably never know about it, just like Zoro didn't know how many times Sanji had subtly saved his sorry life by giving him heaps of iron-rich food after a particularly bloody fight.

Such was the way of life. As long as everyone around him was properly fed, it didn't matter.

Finally Nami-_san_ sighed and closed her eyes. "Alright. But you know what that means."

It was enough for the knot inside him to come loose, for the tension to vanish. Just like that, things were back to normal, and he could look lovingly at her again. "Of course, Nami-_san_! I will go make you a special Love Snack right away to apolog--"

"No," she said, and there was the hint of a smirk on her face. "It means you are in charge of making sure they bathe at least every other day, starting today."

He gaped at her. This couldn't be. He had enough work as it was.

"Nami-_sa_--"

But she was already looking back at her map. "No excuses, Sanji-_kun_".

* * *

Luffy was whining again. After some careful deliberation with himself, Zoro had decided that he didn't really dislike the other boy, and there had to be a reason why he'd accepted to become his subordinate. He was still not sure what that reason was, and in the meantime the guy he was supposed to think of as his captain talked way too much.

And too loudly, considering the poor protection offered by the _mikan_ grove.

"They say you're their captain," he scolded the boy, "and you're going to let that woman tell you what to do?" It wasn't that the request in itself was completely unreasonable. It was that it hadn't been a request, it had been an order. He didn't like that, just like he didn't like the way she always acted like she was in charge, or the horrible T-shirt she'd forced on him, that was bright yellow with a big red heart and 'HUG ME' on the front.

When all was said and done, he didn't like _her_, and he'd be damned if he obeyed her orders.

"But Zoro," Luffy pleaded, "it's _dinn_-" he stopped, and Zoro noticed he wasn't looking at him anymore. Somewhat surprised, he turned around, looked up. Looked further up. Even from this weird angle the cook did not look amused, and Zoro tried not to remember the way the pirates had fallen as he made himself stand up and hold his glare.

"As long as I'm on this ship, everyone gets to eat at every meal." The way he said it sounded like a curse, and Zoro knew better than to share Luffy's happy squeal. "That doesn't mean the two of you can go around doing whatever you like. When you're told to do something, you do it."

Sanji really didn't look amused, and the way he was tapping his right foot on the wood as though checking for its resistance made Zoro a little uneasy, but he scowled anyway.

"We're not kids!" he protested heatedly, partly because he'd never really considered himself a kid and partly because he'd been told a few hours before that he really wasn't one. Sanji's visible eyebrow raised. Now he looked amused, but somehow it wasn't very reassuring. "You're not? Oh, good. Then I don't have to hold back."

Zoro steeled himself in preparation for the kick, and was very surprised when instead Sanji reached for the front of his collar with one hand, Luffy's with the other, and held them both up at arm's length above him. Without a second thought, Zoro kicked him in the face.

Or tried to. By the time his foot was halfway through, Sanji had raised his own leg in a perfect split, and Zoro's naked toes connected with steel-hard muscles. _Ouch_. And despite having one leg up in the hair and two wriggling people in his hands, the bastard still managed to keep a perfect balance.

"You'll break your toes if you try to kick with that shoddy technique, little egg--" the cook looked horrified for a split second, then the smirk was back. "brat. Now, the two of you gonna be reasonable, or do I have to carry you all the way to the bathroom?"

"Zorooooooo..." Luffy pleaded. Zoro sighed. It would be stupid to keep going. It wasn't like he really cared about taking a bath or not, as long as the instruction didn't come from the witch. He knew enough not to want to make the cook angry at him. Despite all the 'brats' the guy didn't treat him as a kid. And the milk had been _good_.

"Put me down," he said. Sanji lowered both of them and let go, and Zoro started walking as soon as he touched the ground.

"OI. Where do you think you're going?" Sanji growled behind him. Zoro blinked in disbelief. "To the bathroom!" he protested righteously, turning around to look at the cook. Who, against all expectations, grinned.

"Hint," he said, crouching down to look at Zoro from equal heights and pointing a thumb over his own shoulder. "The bathroom is _that_ way."


	5. Chapter 4: The Girl who Died

It had come as a surprise to Sanji that Zoro yielded so easily to him about the bathing, especially after he'd been so stubborn in standing up to Nami-san. At the time, Sanji had naively thought that things would get better. Then, over the next few days, he'd realized that Zoro sometimes looked at him like a hawk, and spent much more time trailing him than was strictly necessary (as in: he spent _some_ time trailing him). There was worse, but he was trying hard not to think about it.

Luffy, in usual irresistible Luffy style, had dragged Zoro off a little while ago. Sanji didn't know where, or what for, and as long as it was somewhere else, he really didn't care. In fact, he was so grateful to his captain for this small mercy that he was seriously considering not beating the idiot to within an inch of his life the next time he raided the fridge.

He was also trying very hard to ignore the conversation that was taking place behind him as he cooked.

"It's like a crush," Usopp said, deep in contemplation. Chopper nodded wisely.

"Yes, it's normal for boys this age to be attracted to strong father figures."

Since pointing out that he was _not_ a father figure would show a bit too obviously that his attempt at ignoring them was failing dreadfully, Sanji bit back the comment and focused on his sauce.

"I saw him test-kicking in the anchor desk this morning, too," Usopp added. Chopper let out a soft "awwww". Sanji felt sick. It was a funny lie. But considering that he himself had once entered the storeroom and found Zoro pretending really hard that he hadn't just been trying to do splits, it was probably _not_ a lie. Something was very, very wrong with the cosmic balance, and everyone who'd noticed seemed to find it incredibly amusing.

Sanji most definitely didn't.

"He still makes a lot of unpleasant comments, though," Chopper pointed out.

_Yes. Excellent point._

"You know, at that age, that's how you express your affection."

_Or not._

"But that's how Zoro always acts around San..." Chopper trailed off as a new shiny idea presented itself to him. "Hey, do you think maybe-"

"Alright," Sanji interrupted, slamming his wooden spoon on the sink. "Enough of this conversation." He really didn't care how they speculated about what Zoro actually thought of him, but the way things were going they were a step away from deciding that the moronic swordsman had romantic feelings for him. Which was a fun if mildly horrifying thought, and not Sanji's problem.

Except that knowing the two of them, they would then move on to how Sanji might or might not reciprocate said feelings. Or worse, decide that he should, and that it was their job to make it so, for the good of the crew.

Like hell he would let that happen.

"Now let me make one thing clear," he said, glaring at his crewmates. "The next moron who makes the slightest comment on this topic gets a one-kick trip all the way back to Skypeia. Understand?"

They were both nodding meekly when the door opened on Robin-_chan_, whose beautiful smile seemed a bit more amused than usual.

"Cook-_san_, I believe swordsman-_kun_ is looking for you."

Sanji closed his eyes in abject defeat.

"Thanks for telling me, Robin-_chan_," he moaned.

It was a sure sign of how unfair the world was to him that even Chopper snorted in his drink.

* * *

Another sign of Zoro's unnatural attachment to Sanji was how often he popped up in the galley a few hours after going to bed. At first Sanji had thought it was because the warm milk he never failed to provide helped the boy sleep. Then, as he surreptitiously glanced at the tired, yawning face, he'd started to suspect that Zoro either kept himself awake, or had found a way to wake up after a few hours. On purpose. Just for the sake of sitting in silence and drinking two mugs of warm milk as Sanji did the dishes or prepared the morrow's breakfast. Then when Sanji was done and indicated that it was time to go to back to bed, Zoro did, and that was it for the evening.

It was as unsettling as any of the other signs that Zoro didn't dislike Sanji's company, but otherwise not really unpleasant. To Sanji it was very much like working alone, really, and he had no valid reason to kick the kid right out when he came. So he didn't, and had instead fit the milk preparation in his schedule, so that he didn't have to go out of his way and Zoro found the warm mug already on the table when he came in.

This time, the drink was cold by the time Zoro, looking especially miserable, pushed the door open. Sanji, who in the back of his mind had been kicking himself for wondering whether the boy was coming at all, reheated the drink with little fuss. It wouldn't be as good, but that didn't seem to matter much.

For the first time, Zoro didn't drink. He just sat there, shoulders slumped and eyes unfocused, as Sanji finished cleaning up after himself.

It wasn't hard to tell that something there was really wrong, and seeing the boy's face like that, he wasn't sure if he could just open the door and wait for him to get the message and leave. So he sat -it felt good to sit after spending so much time standing up- lit up a cigarette, and just looked at Zoro.

It took several minutes, long enough for Sanji to finish his cigarette and decide against having another one just then.

"Did I kill her?" Zoro asked finally, looking straight inside his still full mug. Sanji blinked.

"Kill who?" he asked, because it was the only question that made sense.

"I don't know. The girl." And suddenly Sanji understood. _The memories aren't gone, they've just been locked away._ "You dreamed of her?"

The boy nodded, still apparently lost in the contemplation of his drink. "I wanted her to not be dead. But she was. And it was my fault. So I guess I killed her?"

From the almost anxious tone of Zoro's voice, it wasn't hard to tell what answer he wanted. But Sanji couldn't provide it, or any other. He'd never minded not knowing, because it wasn't his business, just like the worst eighty-five days of his life weren't anyone's business but his and Zeff's. But now, looking at the expression on the kid's face, he sort of regretted never having asked. _Nakama_, he felt, should be able to provide that kind of answer. He sighed, and decided that he should have that other cigarette after all.

"Did you talk with Usopp? About your past?" Except in a way it was Zoro's future, but Sanji refused to try to make sense of the whole thing. There was Zoro and a Devil Fruit involved. Trying to think about it sensibly was just a certain path to headache.

Zoro snorted. "Usopp is a liar," he declared as if it was the Truth of Everything. Which in a way it was.

"Found that out by yourself, have you? Yeah, Usopp lies. But what did he tell you?"

"That I'm a swordsman," Zoro said. Still not looking up. "That I beat up a lot of people, and he's only seen me lose once. And," at this he frowned and looked up at Sanji as if for confirmation "that he's the one who taught me everything." Sanji smirked. "That last one was a lie. He forgot to mention that you're a major pain in the ass most of the time, but the rest is true." He got up and went to get a bottle of wine that in normal times Zoro would have shown a lot of interest in, and poured himself a glass.

"I've seen you slash through more people than I can remember," he admitted once he'd drunk his glass. "and I've seen the defeat Usopp was talking about. It was suicide, trying to fight that guy. You knew it, but you still tried, for some reason." Another glass, and then he stopped, because he didn't want to talk too much. "All I can say is, I don't know a thing about a dead girl. That was before I met you. If you've told anyone about it, it's Luffy. And even if you did, he doesn't remember any more than you do. You'll have to wait to find out. Twenty-one days left."

"But-" The boy stopped, and it was so terribly wrong to see Zoro like this, so lost and distressed. Faced with a problem he couldn't solve by growling and shoving his swords up something or someone. He was a man of action, for whom it was easier to lash out and fight than face whatever enemies were within. Sanji understood that perfectly.

"You've had that dream several times," he said. Not really a question. Even as a child, it would take more than just one dream to put Zoro in that kind of state. He didn't know what had prompted Zoro to talk about it now and not before, but it couldn't possibly be the first time. He wouldn't be so shaken, if it was. Indeed, Zoro nodded. Sanji sighed. Not so much he could do. All he knew about being comforted from nightmares was the ritual offering of warm milk, which obviously wasn't enough anymore. That, and the memory, so faint it seemed made up

--_of a warm presence against him and a lullaby whispered in his hair as he fell asleep, and the feeling that everything would be alright because Mother was here_--

of human contact.

Which was something Zoro would probably never let him live down, but that was in three weeks and right now there was a frightened kid in front of him, who was asking for his help and his guidance. The first time that had happened to him, since people had turned to Zeff at first, and then to Luffy. It was a responsibility he would have done well without, but it was there. Oh well. The Straw Hats Pirates as a whole were bad at thinking about consequences. They were probably famous for that on half the Grand Line. Plus, if the bastard ever mentioned it, Sanji had piled up quite a decent amount of blackmail material in the past weeks.

"You can sleep with me, if you want," he offered.

Zoro bristled. "I'm not a baby!" he shot defiantly. "I don't need that!"

"Of course you don't need it," Sanji said, rolling his eyes. Zoro was Zoro would forever be Zoro. Some things just never changed. "I'm just saying you can."

* * *

The next morning, the weather was gloomy bordering on depressed. There wasn't much wind to speak of, but a heavy curtain of rain blocked both sight and smell, and wandering on deck meant getting drenched faster than you could say 'bad idea'. As far as watch duty went, it was agreed after breakfast that the reduced visibility did not justify anyone drowning themselves in the crow's nest. However, as Nami didn't seem too happy with the thought of some enemy creeping up on them, Robin bloomed four strategically-placed eyes on top of the mast.

As a result, she was sitting in a remote corner of the galley, her real eyes closed as she stirred a cup of coffee, when Usopp declared with an air of importance that this was just the occasion he'd been waiting for, and spread a set of cards on the table. They were peered at curiously.

"Did you make those?" Chopper asked in awe after a moment.

"Yes!" Usopp declared. "It has been my secret project for a while, and now that it is finally completed, the Great Captain Usopp offers you this one-of-a-kind game of Happy Crews!"

"And now I know where my drawing supplies have been disappearing to," Nami said without much acrimony, shuffling through the cards. They were a work of art, slightly bigger than the usual playing card format, and Usopp had drawn and colored each of them by hand. "Vivi in dancer's clothes? Is that really appropriate?" she asked suspiciously. There was no denying that the princess had looked_ good_ in those clothes, but Nami hadn't noticed Usopp paying enough attention to them to be able to draw them this accurately.

"Ahhh, Vivi-_chwaaaan_", Sanji moaned in delight over Nami's shoulder. It was clear that the only reason he hadn't grabbed the card from her hands yet was that it was in her hands.

"They're people you know?" Luffy asked curiously. Usopp grinned proudly at him. "All of them are people we met, friends or foes, in our adventures! Giants, gods, flying horses--"

"Weirdos," Sanji commented, discarding the card of Foxy the Silver Fox for a more interesting face. "Heh, that's a good one of the shitty old man. You're more talented than I thought."

Usopp's chest puffed up with pride. "The Great Captain Usopp is skilled in every area! This was nothing! I once drew the portraits of an entire base of Marines in five hours!" He made a pause long enough for Chopper's eyes to widen in unadulterated hero worship. "And now, the last ones!" he pulled out another few cards from his pocket, and Nami noticed that on their backs was a good copy of her map of Reverse Mountain and the entrance of Grand Line. She'd have to fine him for using her maps (not to mention her paper and pencils) without asking her, but she could mention that later. For now, Usopp was picking a card out of the seven he had in his hand, and handing it to her.

It was undoubtedly her, laughing in the sunshine with two straw hat jolly rogers at the corners of the card. Definitely not the pose she would have chosen, but a good one nonetheless. She nodded at him, but he had moved on, and Chopper and Sanji-_kun _were now both blinking at their own reflections.

By that time, Zoro was having trouble pretending he didn't care about what was happening, and Luffy was almost jumping in his seat in anticipation.

"Robin? Usopp drew pictures of all of us, do you want to see yours?"

A dark eye slit open as the card was put in Robin's hand, but it seemed to take her some time to make sense of what she was looking at. Which wasn't surprising, considering her brain was probably not made to understand the signals sent by so many eyes in such different places. Then she smiled her mysterious smile, and put the card back on the table as she closed her eyes again.

"Is there one of me? Hey, is there?" Luffy finally asked, bouncing with impatience. Usopp grinned at him, slowly put his own on the table, and handed the last two cards to the kids. Even Zoro grabbed the one that was presented to him, and took a peek at his older self. Curious, Nami peered over his shoulder, and chuckled. "Well, that's Zoro, no doubt about it. Not his sanest facial expression, though." But Zoro didn't seem too interested in his face, as he touched his right lobe thoughtfully, looked at the picture again, realized his mistake and tentatively prodded at the other ear, where he found nothing. The holes were still there, probably because he'd been wearing the pendants when he'd been attacked, but he wouldn't be able to feel them.

"You can get the pendants back, if you like," she offered. Zoro scowled at her. But then, he hadn't been doing much else these days. As a grown-up he always expressed intense dislike towards her, especially when money was involved, but she knew it was fake. As a kid, he really did seem to hate her, and she wondered if that might have to do with his own case of hero-worship and the way Sanji-_kun_ was always fawning over her. That was an amusing thought; she made a mental note to ask him when he was back to normal, and turned towards Usopp.

"How did you protect the patterns?" she asked, rather curious. There was no doubt that the paper came from her stocks, but it was thicker than usual, and the colors did not smudge when she experimentally rubbed a card with her thumb.

"I used a secret technique that was taught to me by the Sage Old Masters of West Blue when I was seven!" he claimed. She gave him her best let's-move-on-to-the-facts face, and he sagged a little. "Dipped in artificial resin," he admitted, lowering his voice. "It took me weeks to get it right, even with Chopper's help." Now she was impressed. The resin had solidified and perfectly protected the drawings, but the cards were still supple. "If you lend me some," she offered with the sweet smile that told him there was no way he could refuse, "I'll consider not making you pay for using my paper and instruments."

He gulped, nodded, and took a few steps back. "Now, who wants to play?"

* * *

In the end, everyone but Robin-_chwan_, who was technically on watch duty, volunteered, and it was agreed that since there were too many of them to play properly, they would form teams. Usopp presented the cards of Nami, Chopper, Sanji and himself to Luffy, face down. "You're picking your partner here," he said.

Luffy got teamed up with Usopp. Zoro, to his utter disgust and Sanji's disappointment, picked Nami's card, which put Sanji and Chopper together. Morning dragged into afternoon, the games made longer by Luffy's questions of "oh, who's that?" every time a card changed hands and the ensuing explanation, although most of the time the kid lost interest in the middle of Usopp's lengthy tale.

Despite the inner battle in their team, Nami and Zoro managed to win almost every game, whereas Sanji's determination to get all the cards depicting girls proved to be his downfall, and he and Chopper came in last every time, until Luffy's loudly growling stomach reminded the cook of the time, and he pulled out of the game to make lunch.

They were almost done eating when the ship started rocking. Rushing out, they discovered that the rain had turned to a storm, and with the _Going Merry_ undermanned as it was, they spent all afternoon running around the ship, pulling up the sails, checking for leaks and manoeuvring.

The storm passed by dinner time, but afterwards Sanji was too exhausted to linger long in the kitchen, and he went to bed right after giving Nami-san a Thermos of green tea for her watch. Even then he was greeted in the boys' quarters by nothing but a concert of deep snores, but with the current sleeping arrangements there was always a free hammock for him.

He was almost, but not quite asleep when the steadiest snoring (although not deepest anymore) was interrupted by a gasp, and through half-lidded eyes he saw Zoro jerk upright. Another nightmare. He wondered if the kid would go to the galley despite it being dark and empty, or come to wake him up to get his nightly drink. He wasn't sure he would be able to push himself up and back to the kitchen if that happened. Then Zoro got up and headed towards Sanji's hammock, and the cook half-considered pretending to be too deeply asleep to be awaken. But of course he wouldn't. His duty included feeding warm milk to the first mate, regardless of the time or his state of fatigue or said first mate's age.

But when Zoro reached Sanji's side, he did nothing to wake him up. Instead he stood next to the hammock for long seconds, his face twisted in concentration like he was contemplating the next move of a complex sequence. Then he seemed to reach a decision, grabbed the middle of the hammock and yanked.

Sanji almost fell on the ground from the sudden imbalance, and was about to curse the brat's ears off when he noticed the raised leg. Oh. So _that_ was the little eggplant's deal.

And Sanji hadn't just thought about the shitty swordsman in those terms again. And certainly not in a fond way. Urgh. No way.

Zoro's next move threatened to make Sanji crash to the ground again. The cook sighed. His fault for offering. With a deep sense of impending doom, he shifted in his hammock, reached out to grab a very surprised Zoro and pulled him inside.

There was a bit of flailing, a bit of kicking, and getting Zoro under the blanket required logistics that were a bit too complex for Sanji's current state of awareness, but somehow they managed to settle without either of them falling off. Zoro had made a point to look away from Sanji, which in the morning, when the cook wasn't too tired to think, would probably amuse him to no end. Even when he was craving human contact the moron managed to make it seem like he couldn't care less about it and was just there by accident.

_Idiot_, he thought, not fondly at all; and only fell asleep when the snoring started again.


	6. Chapter 5: Sleeping Habits

The Great Captain Usopp only realized that he'd surrendered to temptation and let his eyes fall closed on watch when Chopper woke him up by poking a rather sharp hoof in his shoulder. Thankfully, his reindeer friend was too tired from their hellish afternoon and not enough sleep afterwards to notice -or comment on- the moderate amount of flailing that ensued, and he only nodded, staring fixedly at the ocean, when Usopp assured him that he was merely honing his sixth sense and not sleeping on watch, of course not.

It was with great relief that Usopp climbed down the mast, opened the hatch and climbed further down, until he was in the safe, warm (and smelling mildly of dirty laundry) haven of the boys' quarters. Out of a week-long habit, he threw a glance towards the couch to check on the well-being of the kids before heading towards his hammock.

It took him three steps to register that while Luffy had been rather largely spread over the surface of the couch, he had definitely been the only one there. Considering that every single muscle in his body was protesting that he should have been comfortably asleep in his hammock for long hours and that his brain was fully dedicated to letting them have their way, it was really a rather quick reaction. The thought of checking where the hell Zoro was at this hour crossed Usopp's mind but quickly fled the area. It wasn't his business, after all. Zoro could take care of himse--

No, no he couldn't, interfered his conscience. While Zoro could get to from any place on the ship to the galley in record time, it had taken him five days to learn his way around the rest of _Merry_ well enough not to end up in the anchor deck every single time he needed to go to the bathroom. Plus, he hadn't landed himself any heavy injury lately, therefore he had no need to sleep the blood back into his body; as he'd obviously decided that naps were for_ kids_ (which, as Usopp understood it, Zoro most definitely wasn't), he never slept during the day anymore, and compensated by having longer nights than the rest of the crew combined. Him not being in his bed so late after his Nami-set bedtime was mildly disturbing. Maybe the Great Captain Usopp should look into it.

Then again, his active imagination and fatigued body provided, if Zoro had wandered off and, for some reason, didn't want to be found, for once Usopp wouldn't be the best-suited man for the job. His gaze wandered to what had been Sanji's hammock for the past weeks as he considered whether the situation was worth waking an irate cook up or not.

There seemed to be more Sanji there than Usopp had come to think of as the normal amount thereof. He stepped closer and was peering at the cook suspiciously when the dim light coming from the hatchway changed slightly (probably, Usopp thought, the great big dragon he'd imagined had been hiding the moon for the past few hours had finally woken up and gone hunting) and for a moment reflected a shade of green that Usopp definitely did not associate with Sanji, except in the "subject B will make fun of subject A at any given occasion" way.

He frowned in almost disbelief, but the fact was here. Zoro and Sanji were sharing a hammock. Zoro. And Sanji. Sharing. A hammock. If 'sharing' could even be considered the word, considering the way Zoro seemed to be sprawled over the cook.

The main question now was this : if by chance a picture of this lovely domestic scene was to be taken, what were the odds of Sanji, or Zoro, or both, savagely murdering the one who'd taken it once they found out?

* * *

Failing all previous predictions, amusement was the last thing on Sanji's mind when he woke up and it appeared that Zoro's sleeping self had no qualms sprawling himself all over someone like a big fluffy blanket. Where Zoro had definitely started the night looking resolutely away from Sanji, he'd turned around at some point and made himself comfortable, pillowing his head on Sanji's shoulder and wrapping an arm as far around him as he could reach.

"What am I, your teddy bear?" Sanji muttered under his breath, rolling his eyes. This was not the kind of behaviour he would have associated with Zoro, younger or older. But he was the one who'd proposed the arrangement, and could hardly protest the consequence of his thoughtless offer. Plus it wasn't really uncomfortable, except for the temperature that was just a bit higher than Sanji liked. It made him drowsy, and drowsiness was the last thing he needed at the moment, when dawn was breaking and he was supposed to be in the galley preparing breakfast, no matter that he was still bordering exhaustion and would have happily spent the next four or five hours there, with or without the added warmth.

He tried to slide stealthily out of his hammock, but as soon as he moved, Zoro's hand clenched in his shirt.

_And he won't let go of his plushie either_, Sanji thought with a mental sigh. In truth he didn't mind Little Zoro quite as much as his older self, but up until now every time he'd been on the verge of thinking of him as cute, he'd managed to remind himself that this was still Zoro and artfully treaded around the danger zone. Now with the boy trustingly spread over him and fuzzy green fur tickling his nose, Sanji was starting to wonder how long that last anchor to reality was going to hold.

Once he'd decided that sending Zoro flying when he got up would bring him more satisfaction than the kind of lingering guilt that was born from kicking puppies, getting off the hammock was easy enough. That Zoro sported a huge bump on his head and didn't seem that intent on getting close to Sanji for the rest of the day was only a side benefit.

Yet two hours after he'd gone to bed, Zoro was back in the galley, as silent as usual, and Sanji wondered if anything could possibly make this whatever-it-was that Zoro had for him waver. And it wasn't like Sanji had done anything to deserve that. Well, maybe he'd been a little rude to Nami-_san_ that day when she'd threatened to use food as a lever on the kids, but really, was even that horrible deed enough bad karma to land him with his own personal fanboy?

Then the milk was drunk (there was not a lot of milk left, Sanji noticed with a frown, they'd have to restock as soon as possible), the last of the dishes were done, and it was time to go to sleep.

Zoro passed the couch were Luffy was snoring happily and followed the cook all the way to his hammock.

Sanji sighed and resigned himself to his fate.

* * *

She was looking down at him, a million feet above him at last, smirking smugly. _You're weak as usual, Zoro_, she said airily, like it couldn't matter less to her. He looked up, glared, raised at least one of the wooden sticks in his hands, then there was a flash of blood - and she was gone.

Zoro's eyes shot open as the strangled cry died in his throat, and for a moment he lay there in the dark, staring at nothing as his heartbeat tried to get to grips with reality and he attempted to stop his slight shaking and block the tears of frustration that had been threatening to spill ever since the first time he'd had a similar dream. That girl seemed to be so important to him, and he couldn't remember but he kept dreaming of her and what kind of weakling did that make him, that it woke him up in a panic almost every night? He should be strong. He _was_ strong. Maybe not as much as Sanji (but he was going to be someday), but at least enough not to let himself be bothered by some stupid dream. He would remember soon, and if they'd lied to him about actually being nineteen then he'd kick all their asses and see what happened. Although he didn't think they'd lied to him. The only one on the crew who was a liar was Usopp, and Zoro had found out that his tales were more or less believable as long as they didn't include the words 'once upon a time' or 'the Great Captain Usopp'.

The more he had those dreams, the less he was sure if he really wanted to remember, but he had to. Real men faced their fears. Even if he wasn't really afraid. Just... disturbed. But disturbed and warm and comfortable and safe, as an arm was wrapped around him and long fingers caressed his hair gently.

The first time this had happened, Zoro had thought that this was how you comforted kids, and he'd almost pushed the hand away, but apart from the whole cooking thing (then again, after watching the man use his knives on a fish, Zoro had decided that sometimes cooking could be a kick-ass thing and was better left to men after all) Sanji was _cool_, and if he did it it was probably okay. So he'd let himself relax that time, and now found it quite enjoyable and soothing.

"B'd dream again?" Sanji slurred sleepily. Zoro shook his head. He didn't want to talk about it. He really didn't. He wanted to fall asleep and not dream, or maybe to never fall asleep again. So he didn't say anything, and instead burrowed his face further in Sanji's shirt.

The hand patting his hair didn't stop until his breathing had evened out, then he was poked on the shoulder. "Oi, brat. You still awake?" Sanji whispered gruffly. Zoro gave out a groaning noise and nodded. "Alright, get up," Sanji ordered, still poking. Zoro did so disgruntledly, wondering if the cook had decided that he should sleep on the couch after all, but Sanji got up as well, nodded towards the hatch and wordlessly headed to the mast and started climbing. Zoro followed after a few seconds.

* * *

While no-one else on the crew seemed to appreciate it too much, Robin enjoyed being on watch at night. Cook-_san_ usually prepared her a thermos bottle of excellent coffee, and while the crow's nest was not excessively comfortable, it gave her some time to let her thoughts wander. Granted, they weren't always happy thoughts, as memories of her past sometimes surfaced for little to no reason; but when the horizon brightened with the promise of dawn and the dark shapes beneath her became the_ Going Merry_ again, she remembered her latest adventures, and how lucky she felt to have met this young captain and his crew.

Robin had learned early in her life that facing or running away from a danger only meant having to deal with the next danger sooner, and was content in letting things happen in their due time. Still, a large proportion of her new crew had a surprising amount of belief that having someone yell excitedly whenever an island was in sight was a major part of a pirate's life. So, while she avoided yelling whenever possible, she did make the effort to focus more of her attention on the horizon than would have been strictly necessary. Therefore it was only when the wind brought her the echo of a voice that she noticed the presence of swordsman-_kun_ and cook-_san_ on deck, their heads at the same level as cook-_san_ was sitting on the stairs, and apparently engaged in a solemn conversation.

One of the things that Robin had not learned until meeting with the Straw Hat crew was gratuitous mischief, but she was a quick learner. The current situation had provided quite a lot of amusement for the past weeks, and she had to admit to a certain amount of morbid curiosity regarding the strange status quo the two men - or man and boy, as it were- had built between them. Eavesdropping was her speciality, before even assassination, and blooming an eye and an ear in the shadows next to them was just as easy as bringing the cup of coffee to her lips.

Cook-_san_ had the two darker swords on his knees, and was carefully watching swordsman-kun. The child was holding the white scabbard in his hands with some difficulty and looking at it with something like confused recognition.

"It's mine," he whispered, his brow creasing in concentration, "but I can't remember!" Robin felt a small amount of pity for him. Knowing bits and pieces of something you knew was immensely important without being able to connect them in any way that made sense was just as immensely frustrating, and even she had not yet learned to fully dismiss that frustration. She couldn't even begin to imagine how bad it must be for a child his age. Nevertheless, putting his hand on the white handle seemed to soothe the boy somehow.

"Can I keep it?" he asked, raising hopeful eyes up at cook-_san_, who shook his head.

"Not until you remember how to use it. I wasn't even supposed to show it to you, but..." he shrugged in something like embarrassment, which made Robin smile indulgently. "You can have these, if you want," he offered, extending a hand from which dangled three identical ear pendants. Automatically, swordsman-_kun_'s hand reached for his left lobe, which was not surprising considering how much he'd played with the new game and stared at his own card in the last few days. He seemed to contemplate for a moment, then nodded gravely.

Cook-_san_ made him step closer, and with a few hissed curses but a gentleness Robin had rarely seen him display put the pendants back were they belonged. They tingled when he pulled his hands away, and Robin, feeling slightly guilty for intruding on what had visibly been an important bonding moment, let her extra organs fade back in nothingness.

* * *

Two weeks later, Sanji was getting more or less used to waking up with a kid at his side. What he wasn't used to was waking up to _two_ kids on either side of him, one hugging him like a giant teddy bear and the other impossibly stretched to hug both of them like... well, like two more or less giant teddy bears.

The sight of Nami-_san_ and Robin-_chan_'s smiling faces above him was also a surprise, albeit a pleasant one. What was less pleasant was that Usopp and Chopper were here too, and not hiding their extreme amusement quite as well as the girls did.

"This is so-" Chopper cooed, and luckily for him Usopp had noticed that Sanji was awake and put his hand on the reindeer's mouth in time to stifle the half-squealed "-cute". Sanji pretended not to notice. He wasn't in a good position to kick at the moment.

Then the fact that all the adult crew was up before him kicked in, and suddenly he was fully awake. "Breakfast!" he said, almost panicking. Could it be that he'd failed everyone, failed the _ladies_ by not waking up?

"Has been taken care of," Robin-_chan_ provided. "And your most enthusiastic mouth to feed is still asleep, so you have nothing to worry about."

That brought him back to the question of why Luffy had decided to join his hammock, which wasn't meant for two and even less for three. And even if in the current situation it was more two and a half than three really, it was a wonder that none of them had fallen off. And another wonder that the brat had managed to pull that off without waking Sanji, considering the mess he'd made of trying to climb in the hammock the very first day. Maybe he was learning to use his power faster than they thought.

He did his best to ignore the looks as he tried to disentangle himself from the kids' hold without waking either of them, but given the limited space he had to do that in, it soon proved to be impossible, and soon he had a noisy, hungry Luffy and a sullen but just as hungry Zoro to deal with.

* * *

"Ace always lets me sleep with him," Luffy explained when asked, between enthusiastic mouthfuls. Nami-_san_ nodded knowingly. "It makes sense," she said. "I used to sneak in Nojiko's bed all the time."

It was probably a sibling thing, Sanji decided. He had no memory of being separated from his parents, but definitely knew he hadn't been invited to share anyone's bed since then. At least not until he was fourteen, and then it hadn't been in the 'comfort' way, and there had been very little sleep involved.

"But why me?" he asked Luffy, and mentally smacked himself at the hint of a whine he heard in his own voice. What did it matter, really, when he already had one brat climbing in his hammock almost every night?

"Zoro was already sleeping with you, so I thought you wouldn't mind," Luffy said like it was obvious. From the amused smile on Nami-_san_'s lush lips and the snort that escaped Usopp despite his best efforts to look cool and unfazed, Sanji knew he hadn't been the only one to hear how wrong that had sounded. He passed on the implication that he was some sort of manslut. A six-year-old Luffy couldn't possibly have meant it like that.

Though he shouldn't put it past him. Luffy had a tendency to be extremely sly at the worst of times.

But of course, his saving grace would be that he had never, in fact, slept with Zoro in _that_ way, and if asked the swordsman would deny it a lot more heatedly than Sanji himself would.

"I'm afraid it's not really comfortable, or safe, with three people in the same hammock," Robin-_chan_ contemplated. Sanji would have mentally blessed her to high heavens for taking his comfort in consideration if he hadn't suspected that she, as well, was a bit too amused by Luffy's phrasing. What was it with the perverted mentality around there anyway? If asked he would be quite willing to say that yes, he had entertained adult thoughts about some of his male crewmates, but this was sick. Zoro and Luffy were_ kids_. The thought should never have crossed his mind. Or anyone else's, at that.

"But why does Sanji take Zoro and not me?" Luffy protested, pouting. "It's not fair!"

Usopp snorted louder than before. Nami-_san_ chuckled. Robin-_chan _hid something that looked suspiciously like a smirk behind her graceful hand. Chopper looked at each of them in turn, obviously wanting to get the joke. Sanji felt the promise of a headache hiding just behind the next sexually slanted sentence.

"If..." Chopper started, slightly hesitant. "If you want to sleep with me, I don't mind."

This time there was no hint of amusement from anyone. Sanji rather felt there was some preferential treatment going on, but was distracted from his thoughts about the unfairness of it all as Luffy squealed.

"Yay!" he said with a huge grin. "Chopper is _fluffy_!"

"Don't think you're pleasing me, brat! I don't care about your opinion!" Chopper predictably protested, blushing and squirming. Sanji felt somewhat happy for him. From what he knew of Chopper's history, the little reindeer had probably never got to go to sleep with someone cuddling him.

Not that falling asleep next to someone meant there was cuddling going on. But Luffy was definitely the cuddling type. As opposed to... other people.

"And thus Zoro gets Sanji all to himself," Usopp concluded, smirking widely.

Sanji kicked him.


	7. Chapter 6: Single Parental Unit

In the galley was pinned a sheet of paper artfully negotiated from Nami's stack by Usopp, who had written all numbers from thirty to one in decreasing order on it with as many coloured markers as he could put his hands on. Every day after lunch, one of the kids was entrusted with a black marker and allowed to cross out one more day. While the proceedings had to be carefully monitored as Luffy tended to get a little overenthusiastic, the ritual was generally acknowledged as a good thing. Anyone reaching despair or dangerous levels of frustration only had to look up at the paper to be reminded that there were only n more days of this torture left. As this only seemed to happen to Sanji, placing the countdown sheet in plain view in the galley was a stroke of genius, if Usopp said so himself (he did).

In truth, most of the crew had been expressing concern for Sanji. Luffy was easily distracted and spent most of his time playing with Usopp and Chopper or sitting on the figurehead staring at the ocean (a characteristic that seemed to be built in); with tactful teaching from Nami (repeated whacks on the head), he had learned not to whine for food all the time. Luffy was easy enough to deal with, and if one didn't take in consideration the regular bathing disasters, Sanji didn't have to deal with him that often.

Zoro was another business entirely, and it wasn't clear why. His adulation for Sanji had reached its peak early on and stayed there. It was pointed out that Sanji had allowed the later developments of late-night meetings in the galley and sharing a hammock, and therefore had no right to complain about anything. Then Chopper meekly suggested that maybe the endless teasing that Sanji got from most of the grown-up crew didn't serve to improve his mood, and it was something like a revelation. As the quality of the food tended to suffer from Sanji's bad moods, the decision was made not to tease him anymore about Zoro's unwanted affections. Too much.

Usopp, who was starting to suspect that Sanji had picked him as the new target of kicks that should rightfully have been directed at Zoro, went a step further and tried to get the green-haired kid to lay off Sanji's case a little. One long and lazy afternoon, by the cunning artifice of telling tales about the adventures of the Straw Hat crew (he had an endless stock of those), he carefully outlined the main facts in the relationship between Sanji the Sea Cook and Roronoa Zoro the Pirate-Hunter-Turned-Pirate.

It had the expected effect, only more. Zoro, not one of nature's most chipper kids, became outright broody. He refused to talk to Sanji any more than strictly necessary, went to sleep on the couch every night without even being told to, and spent most of his days alone in the anchor deck. After Chopper voiced his concerns about this unhealthy behaviour, Robin made a stealthy check and announced that he was training most ferociously and could now pull a quite decent handstand.

Strangely enough, it didn't seem to make Sanji any happier with the world. Instead of that... well, he was doing his best to hide it, but he was quite obviously worried. In turn, the good spirits of the rest of the crew were considerably dampened; Usopp, seeing this turn of event, decided that since he'd only told Zoro the truth he could not be blamed for the kid's attitude, and therefore kept his mouth wisely shut about it.

The day count was down to three when, to everyone's relief, Chopper announced an hour after breakfast that an island was in sight. Anticipation rose. Sanji spend most of the morning making a list of everything he needed to buy should the island be inhabited, or find if it wasn't. Luffy bounced excitedly and noisily from one end of the ship to another until Nami screamed at him to be quieter - at which point he endeavoured to bounce excitedly and silently, which was just as annoying and a lot more dangerous.

An early lunch made of the last of the perishable supplies was just ready when they got to the island, and it was decided that they'd eat before docking. Considering the general excitement (originating mainly from Luffy), that didn't take long, and by noon Sanji was ready to head to the middle-sized town for shopping purposes.

Nami dropped the bomb just as he was about to head off.

"Sanji-kun, why don't you take the children with you? Chopper wants to check out some interesting-looking plants in that forest over there and Usopp has to repair Merry again. I'm sure Zoro and Luffy would enjoy seeing the town."

There was more protest from Zoro than from Sanji, who had long since understood that he couldn't escape Nami's will if he tried. Usopp waited until the grumbling cook, holding each kid by a hand and seemingly ready to murder the first idiot to make a comment, was out of sight before he questioned the wisdom of Nami's move. The answer was scathing.

"They need to sort this out. I'm not taking three more days of this. So unless you have a better idea or want me to explain to Sanji-kun what happened to make Zoro behave like that, shut up now and go do something useful."

He did.

Summer on a Spring island was definitely one of the best times and places to be, Sanji decided. It was warm with a nice cool breeze, and girls all around him were wearing light dresses and tight shirts. It made a walk in the market a feast for the eyes, especially since the current local fashion seemed to be all about partial transparency.

Shopping for food was, after cooking, Sanji's favourite activity, especially when he could take his time and walk leisurely in the alleys of a market such as this one, surveying vegetables, meat, fish (he always paid extra attention to how many different sort of fish were available), spices and fruit, talking to shopkeepers about prices and preparation and the weather, and falling in instant love with a beautiful woman or ten.

By all rights, this place was paradise. And he'd got there dragging a kid in each hand, which more or less defeated the whole point of being in paradise.

Life really sucked sometimes. And to top it all, Zoro was sulking.

It was stupid. When Zoro had stopped his nightly visits to the galley the day after they'd run out of milk, Sanji had chosen to take it as an unspoken compliment to his cooking skills, and decided that it was a very good sign indeed, since it showed that the kid had been coming for the drink, not Sanji's presence.

He'd been somewhat surprised, when he finally went to bed, to see Zoro huddled under a blanket on the couch. Which could mean that the nightmares were finally gone and Sanji was getting his hammock back to himself at long last; but it had taken Sanji ages to fall asleep. Long enough to hear the thrashing and the groans, to see Zoro sit up, clutching at his ear pendants before he glanced Sanji's way, shook his head, and laid back down. Long enough to have to tell himself four or five times that if the idiot had decided that he didn't want help there was no reason why Sanji should give it.

It went downhill from there. Sanji would have been happy with the sudden change, but something was very obviously wrong and he couldn't begin to figure out what it was. The only things he was certain of were that the nightmares had definitely not got better, and whenever Zoro wasn't showing off how much he didn't care about what Sanji was doing or where he was, he looked downright miserable.

It was disturbing. And did not make for happy shopping.

A commotion at the other side of the market place brought him back to the here and now, but he refused to pay attention to it. In the current circumstances, it was best to do the shopping quickly and go back to the ship as soon as possible. Possibly then he would be able to sneak back out. He tugged impatiently at the hands of the kids as he took a long stride away from the noise, and as if in response there was a loud murmur of wonder from behind.

Suddenly suspicious, Sanji looked down from the first time since he'd left Merry. Zoro was still here, deliberately looking away. Luffy...

In truth, Sanji should have known better than to think that holding the rubber brat's hand would be enough to keep him in tow, but he'd been distracted. Which didn't really explain how he hadn't noticed that his captain had stopped at an enticing food store and just let his arm stretch as Sanji walked away. The boy was now in the middle of a fascinated crowd, apparently enjoying the attention very much as he went through the usual business of explaining that he was a rubber man. Sanji gave a loud sigh, and let go of Zoro's hand.

"I'll be back in a moment. Don't move," he ordered in a voice that hopefully indicated all the nasty things he could and would to to the brat if he did, and followed Luffy's arm into the middle of the crowd. When he finally got there, he could only hope that the shopkeeper was making good business thanks to the entertainment and had decided to give the kid free food, because if Sanji had to pay for all of this Nami-san was not going to be happy with him. How Luffy could eat so much in such a small amount of time was still a wonder even to him.

"Oi, brat," he said in a mildly threatening tone. "Get up, we're going." Trying to explain to Luffy that he was being a pain had never worked before, there was no reason why it should now.

"Bu' Shanchi," the boy started with his mouth full, spitting a few bits of meat in the process. Having noticed that he was wasting part of his loot, he swallowed before continuing. "I'm hungry." The supplicating eyes were a good trick, that thankfully only worked up to the age of ten or so, but Sanji wasn't falling for it. He glared down Luffy's 'lost puppy' look, opened his mouth-

"Oh, this boy is just so cute! Is he yours?"

Sanji whipped around, the command gone directly from his ears to his muscles without stopping at the brain. She was about twenty-five, with a heart-shaped face, black hair cascading beautifully on her naked shoulders, a chest worthy of Nami-san's and waist he could wrap his hands around, and she was smiling at him, her light green eyes twinkling with amusement and interest. In him.

"Mellorine" he answered weakly, knees gone to mush and heart-eyed, feeling that his day had finally come.

Despite the impulse to show Sanji that he wasn't taking any order from him, Zoro did as he was told and stayed in place. And stayed. And stayed. Until he had the feeling that he'd been standing there for hours and finally turned around to look at the food stall where he'd seen Luffy stop earlier.

There was no-one there. Well, there were people, but none he knew. Luffy and Sanji were gone. Frowning, Zoro looked around the place, but couldn't find them anywhere.

Sanji hadn't come back for him. Zoro cursed himself for not having expected it, knowing what he knew now. But he'd prove to them that he didn't care about the man. He'd go back to the ship himself, and get there before them too. And in three days, when he was a strong fighter again, he would show Sanji.

Fully determined, Zoro looked around himself one more time -just to be sure- and headed back towards the sea.

This new development was heaven and hell combined in a delicious torture.

The woman who had first talked to him was called Alya, and her interest hadn't seemed to wane when he'd presented her with his best compliments and a flower. She'd been shopping with her twin sister and a friend, a blonde goddess with hair down to her waist and endless legs, and all four of them had ended up on the terrace of a back-alley restaurant for a drink.

Ciara gave Sanji a perfect view of her cleavage every time she reached for her glass. Her sister crossed and uncrossed her legs, her thin silky dress opening just enough to let him peek at the smooth skin underneath. Eri licked her lips absently after each slow mouthful of her cocktail, eyes half-closed as she enjoyed the leftover taste, and when she wasn't drinking she always seemed to have a finger on her moist lower lip.

This was perfection, except that there weren't four of them but five, three of which seemed to have an unending interest in the absolute cuteness that was... Luffy. While the drinks were obviously on Sanji, the girls were smothering Luffy with meat, pies, cakes, ice-cream, that he all wolfed down enthusiastically without paying any attention to all the cooing overhead.

The girls, sadly, were not paying any attention to Sanji's own cooing. From time to time one of them would turn around and ask him a question -about Luffy, of course- before returning her attention to the evil attention-stealing brat. Sanji was starting to consider getting himself a Devil Fruit power whenever he had the chance. The only downside of that plan was that it would make the crew have more people unable to swim than people able to save them, which could turn out to be a problem. Still, it was tempting.

Or maybe, as he'd thought when they asked him if he was Luffy's father, he should get a brat of his own. It seemed to attract girls like nothing else did. But here they were, in his presence, gracefully accepting the best drinks he could offer them in this place, but apart from that totally ignoring him. Because Luffy was so cute and sweet and funny.

Sanji wasn't sure what he'd done, and didn't know or usually care if there was some higher being in charge of this world, but this was a very cruel joke indeed. Idly, he wondered if they would have liked Zoro so much, and froze as his brain sent him a long string of insults.

He'd left Zoro at the market. And he'd left the market when he should have been shopping. Judging by the position of the sun, it had been hours. Nami-san would be worried. He couldn't stay here any longer.

Still, between his endless apologies and the ladies' numerous attempts at a last pat on Luffy's wild hair, it took him about half an hour to get back to the market, where Zoro was most definitely not. Holding Luffy by the collar this time, Sanji tried to think of the best course of action, but was distracted as a group of teenage girls walked by him, pointing at them and whispering between themselves.

The first thing to do, quite obviously, was to bring the kid back to the ship, or he wouldn't be able to get anything done. Then he could go and look for Zoro. And maybe, just maybe, when he'd found the damn brat it would still be time to shop, and Nami-san wouldn't be too angry at him.

Zoro wasn't lost. Temporarily disoriented maybe, because he was more or less sure that it hadn't taken them so long to get from the ship to the market, and he didn't remember any twisted, narrow, grey alley, but he was going to find Merry eventually.

As long as he was rid of those guys, but they didn't seem to want to let him do that. He looked at them defiantly. True, he'd accidentally walked into one of them, and they'd both fallen over in a painful heap. Zoro had apologized. Sort of. But obviously it wasn't enough for the guy or his friends, who were now forming a circle around him and looking down at him threateningly.

"So how are you going to repay me for that, kiddo?" the one he'd bumped into asked. Zoro glared back at him without answering. He'd apologized. There was nothing more he could, or wanted to do. And he wasn't scared.

He just wanted to get away and go back to the ship.

"Oi, kiddo, don't ignore me," the guy said, taking a step towards him. Zoro stepped back and walked right into one of the other guys. There were dangerous-looking grins on all the faces he could see, and he knew without a doubt that this was going to get nasty. If he wanted a chance to escape he'd have to create it himself.

Zoro took a step forward, turned around, and threw his most powerful kick at the pair of legs that was blocking him from the alley. It was caught easily, in one hand, before it connected, and suddenly Zoro found his balance gone as the guy held his foot and lifted it higher, higher, until Zoro couldn't do anything but let himself fall on his back.

They all snickered at him, and he snarled.

"Ah, there you are," a familiar voice drawled from a few meters away. "The hell you doing here, little eggplant?"

"Oh look, your sugar daddy is coming to the rescue," the one who seemed to be in charge told Zoro with a smirk. "I'm sorry, mister, we're not done with him yet. Come back later."

Sanji took a long drag from his cigarette, and for a moment Zoro wondered if he'd do what they said. They were obviously no match for him, but Sanji didn't care what happened to him anyway, so why should he try to stop them? "I don't think so. Zoro, come here. We're going back."

Zoro had barely twitched in Sanji's direction that he was grabbed by the collar. "You want to fight us for him, mister?" said the one holding him. "We're not done, he said." From the corner of his eye, Zoro saw a knife being pulled out from a pocket. Sanji's eyebrow rose. "Fight?" he asked disinterestedly. "How old are you anyway?"

"Sixteen," the boss answered proudly, "and if you think you can hurt any of us, you have another thing coming, mister." There were loud snickers around him as the gang changed positions. Zoro saw Sanji smirk. "Definitely old enough to get a good beating," the cook mused, then looked straight at Zoro. "Don't move," he said simply. Zoro froze.

The first kick went a mere centimetre over his head and sent the guy who'd been holding him flying into a wall. There was a gasp from the other idiots, but before they could attack or run Sanji was on them, kicking indiscriminately and fast, so fast that Zoro could hardly follow his moves, until the world around him slowed to a halt and his attackers were all laying around him unconscious or gasping in pain.

"You alright?" Sanji asked carelessly. The relief that Zoro had been feeling changed back to the aimless anger he'd been feeling since Usopp's revelation.

"What do you care?" Zoro snapped back. Sanji, surprised, took a step back.

Usually the answer would have been easy. "I don't, but." But Nami-san said she wanted you back on the ship. But Luffy wants to know. But you're not going to skip out on doing your fair share of work for a change. A downright lie, of course, because if nothing else they were nakama, and it was practically written in the job description that they couldn't not care.

They were both very fine with that little piece of manly denial. But this Zoro didn't know that, and maybe that was why the question stung a bit. Sanji knew he should just ignore it, wait the next three days out and sigh in relief when things finally went back to normal. That was the easy way out of this impossible situation.

It was the cowardly way, too, and Sanji was anything but a coward. If he didn't want to feel like he'd let himself be beaten by a six-years-old, he'd have to actually deal with the problem, and deal with it now. He stepped up to Zoro, crouched, and in one movement grabbed the kid behind the knees and threw him over his shoulder.

He ignored the gasp of surprise, then the muffled cries of protest as well as the pound of tiny fists on his back and the looks he got from everyone around him as he headed back to more populated areas. He only stopped walking when he got to the ice-cream store, and turned around so that Zoro could see the possibilities, despite being upside down.

"You get two scoops," he said callously, and didn't wait for the grumble of "I dun want any" to add "and if you don't choose right now I'm going to pick them myself and do believe that if you dare to drop your ice-cream on the ground you'll lick the whole street clean. Now. What. Do. You. Want?"

"Rspbrry'n'chclt" Zoro mumbled in Sanji's jacket. The cook raised an eyebrow in surprise. He would never have expected Zoro to go for something this refined, but ordered the raspberry and chocolate ice-cream anyway, and gestured to the bewildered old man behind the counter to add as much whipped cream and toppings as he could.

Balancing both Zoro and the huge ice-cream cone as he walked up to the nearest bench was easier than he'd expected, and he managed to drop the brat there without too much trouble either. Still he didn't feel like this was much of an achievement. The hardest part was yet to come. But at least Zoro didn't need more incentive to start eating his ice-cream.

Sanji sat next to him and smoked in silence for a while without ever taking his eyes off Zoro. It was a great way to make people talk, and this Zoro hadn't even had ten years to learn to shrug the tension off. Predictably, the ice-cream was still half-alive (but Zoro already had red sticky streaks all over his cheeks) when the kid paused and looked in the distance.

"Why were you looking for me?" he asked accusatively. Sanji rolled his eyes. "Because you wouldn't have found your way back to Merry by yourself in a thousand years and you still moved away from the spot I'd told you to stay at."

"You also said you'd come back in a moment," Zoro grumbled. It was a good point, that Sanji had hoped would be overlooked. No such luck.

"I got... distracted," he admitted. "When you're older, you'll understand..." he trailed off, forced himself to remember who he was talking to, and reformulated his thought. "Nah, you probably won't, in this case. The thing is... I really didn't mean to leave you back there for so long."

"You could have left me," Zoro said rather gloomily before licking at the melting ice-cream half-heartedly. "Then you'd all have sailed on and you'd be rid of me." Sanji blinked. He still had very few clues about what the hell was going on, and this was somehow turning out to be all his fault. Oh, joy.

"Why would I want to do that?" he asked despite the knowledge that he had half a dozen answers ready for that question at any given time. Zoro looked into his ice-cream cone like he usually would with a mug of ale or, more recently, milk.

" 'Cos you hate me," he mumbled.

Sanji stared straight ahead. Gods, he didn't want to be having this conversation. But he had to, as a man. "Alright," he said before taking a deep breath. "First, I want you to swear on your honor as a man that you will never use what I'm going to say against me in any way."

Zoro was so surprised by the demand that he actually looked straight at Sanji for the first time in days. It took him a few seconds, but finally he nodded. "I swear."

At least there wouldn't be any problem on that side. If there was one thing Zoro always tried his best to do, it was keeping his promises. Still, Sanji would have much rather been somewhere else. "Good. I don't know where you got that idea," he got out in a rush, and grimaced, "but I don't hate you."

"Usopp said-"

"I thought you knew better than to believe anything Usopp says without checking the facts with someone else." So that was the problem. This was not technically an offense worthy of punishment, but the next time the long-nose tried to do anything funny in Sanji's kitchen, he was going to get it, and get it good. "What did he say?"

Zoro looked down, like he was trying to remember exactly. "He said that we were always fighting. You and me. That sometimes he thinks we're going to kill each other over nothing."

"That wimp," Sanji cursed under his breath. "Well, that's true enough. Though I don't think Luffy would let us kill each other. He can be bothersome like that."

Zoro kept staring at the pavement, his posture the very picture of defeat. Sanji sighed. Oh, Usopp was going to pay for putting him in that situation. And Zoro too, once he was kickable again without making Sanji feel like he'd done something awful to an innocent puppy.

"Listen, brat. The Zoro I know is rude and unpleasant and lazy and selfish and overall a total moron, and there's been days when I've wanted to murder him in his sleep and throw his corpse overboard. No doubt he's had the thought too. When we annoy each other too much, we fight. The moment you're back to normal we're both going to pretend that all of this never happened, and Usopp and the others will do their best to make sure we never forget, and we'll blame each other and fight and possibly destroy half the ship in the process. That's how it works. But we don't hate each other, though I have to say I like you a lot more as a kid." He took a deep drag of his cigarette, but it was mostly for show. He was drowning in a sea of sentimentalism already, with the certitude that Zoro would never say a word of it to anyone, so how bad could a few more drops of water be? "I'm sorry I forgot about you earlier," he said, and that had a ring of truth to it he hadn't expected. Maybe he really was getting into this responsibility thing.

Zoro, still looking at the ground, was nodding slowly. "Okay," he said after a moment, and looked back at Sanji with an intense expression on his face. Sanji let out a chuckle, and for once didn't resist the impulse to mess with what little of Zoro's hair was messable. "Now get the ice-cream off your face and let's move on. There's shopping to do before the stores close, and you'll have to carry a lot of bags to apologize for making me run after you all around town."


	8. Chapter 7: Aftermath

Sanji came back from his expedition in much better spirits than Chopper had dared to hope. With him he brought food and a Zoro who looked much happier than he had in the past week and was dragging behind him rather more plastic bags than Sanji himself. The boy seemed extremely proud of having been entrusted with that task, so Chopper refrained from commenting that it seemed a bit unfair.

Zoro dropped his bags on the fine sand beach they'd docked at, and started emptying them as Sanji went straight to the galley to put his own bags away.

"Uh, Zoro," Usopp said from the railing, "I don't think you should do that there. All this goes on the ship."

A hard kick caught the sharpshooter in the head, and within half a second the sharp glare the kid had been sending at Usopp turned into a smug grin.

"No it doesn't," Sanji commented lightly, patting himself for a lighter. "The log pose will take four days to set, so we can relax a little, and I thought we could have dinner on the beach for a change."

"I was only trying to help, no need to hit me!" Usopp half-protested half-whined, rubbing a bump on his head. Sanji barely glanced at him before he easily jumped down on the beach to help Zoro unpack.

"I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to think before you help, then," he commented off-handedly. Then, as an afterthought and with a sharp, meaningful smirk: "Well, it wouldn't hurt as much, at least." The threat in his tone was much more subtle that the previous kick to the head, but from his safe observation spot behind the open door of the galley, Chopper could tell that Usopp got the point.

Seeing that the relationship between Zoro and Sanji seemed to have improved considerably in the last few hours, the reindeer was happy enough with the unspoken order not to interfere between the two of them.

In all honesty, Chopper was growing a bit uncomfortable with the children. From a strictly medical point of view, Devil Fruits and their properties remained a mystery. Logia-type powers were hard to explain away but followed a certain logic, and Chopper had studied his own case enough to understand quite a lot about the Zoan type as well. As for Paramecia types, it really depended. Luffy's case, for example, could be said to work on the same basis as the Logia types in that it probably worked on a molecular level, but there seemed to be no logical explanation to Robin's powers.

Chopper would never dare demand that his disquieting _nakama_ submits to examinations in order to make science take a further step in the understanding of the Devil Fruits, but it didn't mean he didn't think about it. As for what could possibly revert a fully functional adult body back to a younger and arbitrary age, including artificial modifications of the body (all of Zoro's scars had vanished, and Chopper couldn't wait to see if they would reappear when he turned back) and, more importantly, memories, well... he was curious, very much so, and sometimes he caught himself thinking of his friends as study subjects instead of crewmates. He managed not to feel guilty about it by thinking that it was a professional deformation, like Sanji thinking of him as an emergency food supply. It wasn't _real_. And there were other things to worry about.

Since Usopp had assured him that their memories would come back at the end of the thirty days, Chopper was less worried about the possibility that they wouldn't remember than about their reactions when they did. According to most studied cases of amnesia, when someone regained lost memories after some time, they tended to forget everything that had happened since the loss. In which case Luffy and Zoro would remember being attacked, then waking up on _Merry_'s deck, and nothing would be left of the last month except for a few pictures that Usopp had shown the doctor two days ago under a vow of absolute secrecy.

It might be the best thing that could happen, in the circumstances. Chopper firmly believed that nothing but potential harm to his nakama could sway Luffy, but Zoro's pride would not take well the memory of having clung to Sanji for a whole month. Worse, if his memories got mixed up somehow, he might decide that this was his normal pattern of behaviour. Chopper wasn't sure that Sanji, who was wound rather tight already, would appreciate that.

But at the moment there was no need to worry. Despite the fact that Usopp was very obviously and awkwardly keeping out of Sanji's reach, everyone worked in harmony to prepare the party, and by the time the sun set Luffy's stomach was growling continuously at the delicious smells emanating from the barbecue.

The party lasted long into the night and involved a little bit more alcohol than was really reasonable. Nami, despite the lack of obvious signs of drunkenness, was the first to yawn and declare that she was going to bed. Robin followed soon after, and it was only when Sanji was sure that they were safely tucked in their cabin that he offered, with a sly grin, to give the children their 'first' taste of alcohol.

Chopper didn't think it was a very smart thing to do, but his brain was in a nice fuzzy state at the moment, and he only pointed out that it wouldn't be good for them to get too much of it.

"Of courshe," Sanji slurred, filling a shot glass with apple liquor as the two kids watched with anticipation, "it's jusht a taste." He walked to the log Luffy and Zoro were sharing next to the bonfire. "Captain first," he declared as he gave the glass to Luffy. The boy took it carefully and dipped his lips in the liquid. He grimaced a little, but took another sip, and another, and another until the glass was empty. Then he hiccuped loudly and misjudged the distance between his hand and Sanji's making the glass fall in the sand with a totally unconcerned "woooooops".

It was Zoro who bent down to retrieve the glass, wiped it up, and gave it back to Sanji with an impatient look. The cook grinned, and filled the glass again with rather less care than he had the first time. When he had it in his hands, Zoro looked at it for a long time as if steeling himself for something, then brought it to his face and swallowed everything in one go.

They all watched as he tried to pretend it was nothing while going through various shades of red, until finally he gave up on his pretense of control and started coughing loudly.

Usopp and Chopper shared a glance and burst out laughing. They were slightly drunk themselves and so used to seeing Zoro in perfect control when it came to alcohol, that it seemed incredibly funny that he couldn't take it at the moment. "Oi, guys, that's not nice," Sanji chided, but Chopper thought he was doing a very bad job of hiding his wide grin.

When he was done coughing, Zoro seemed to consider the option of sulking the slight humiliation off, but that was when Usopp offered to play cards again, with the slight drawback that five players were still a bit too much. Wordlessly, Zoro got up and went to sit so close to Sanji that he was almost in his lap. Luffy grinned, and declared that he was with Usopp. Chopper would have felt slightly rejected if he hadn't been half-drunk and rather confident that Little Luffy liked him a lot, and not as prospective food either.

They played and played until the fire died; by that time both children were asleep, Zoro with his head comfortably propped in Sanji's lap and Luffy clutching one of Chopper's legs as he was wont to do every night since they'd started sleeping in the same hammock. Usopp finally declared that he was too tired to go on and plopped down right there on the beach. Chopper collected all the cards and gave them to Sanji to put away safely in a box that was within his reach, then both human pillows laid down and tried to make themselves comfortable without waking up the kids.

* * *

Sanji was the first to admit that he tended to be less strict with his work when they were at an island. The last night before the predicted change back, he realized that he'd let too many dirty dishes pile up and wouldn't be able to cook comfortably in the morning if he left things that way. He spent the next few hours cleaning and was in no way surprised when, as he finally climbed down the mast at two in the morning, he found Zoro fast asleep in what he now thought of as their shared hammock.

He stood there for a moment, watching the kid sleep peacefully and somewhat wondering how the next day would change the tentative balance they'd worked out. Then he hung his jacket carefully and tossed his shoes away before climbing in; it required some acrobatic skills as he didn't really want to wake Zoro up, but finally he was settled, and warm and comfortable, and it wasn't long before he fell asleep.

It was the heat that pulled him out of his slumber too few hours later, and the weight at his side that forced him into real awareness of his immediate surroundings. The snores that were sent right into ear were deeper than they'd been, and the arm loosely wrapped around him longer and heavier. _Didn't they say thirty days?_ Sanji wondered hazily. But then, twelve hours more or less really didn't mean much after a month, he supposed.

Zoro had gone back to normal, and it was just Sanji's luck that the bastard had done so in the middle of the night and Sanji's hammock.

The same bastard was also catching up on a month of midnight erections, by the feel of it. Which answered Sanji's unvoiced questions about Zoro's supposed impotence (anyone who was as uninterested in girls as he was had to have a reason for not paying attention), but didn't exactly make the situation more comfortable. While the chances were high that Zoro's hard-on was nothing more than the result of having a warm body next to him and his hormones finally unlocked after a month of nothing, Sanji was feeling the start of a similar reaction that he wouldn't be able to blame solely on the circumstances.

It was way too hot in here anyway; Little Zoro had been warm, but as an adult he was a fucking furnace. It was no wonder that he didn't seem to feel the cold like normal people did. It was for this reason, really, that Sanji didn't really want to fall back asleep and pretend he hadn't noticed that he was now sharing his hammock not with a rather sweet kid but with the stupid swordsman. The question now was how to get rid of him, since kicking was made impossible by the position.

But then, there were two nice things about elbows : they were extremely convenient when the target was too close to kick, and they weren't _hands_. Zoro's stomach, despite being all rock-hard muscle, made a very nice target.

"THE FUCK?" the moron yelped as he woke up, and threw helpless glances around himself.

"It's the middle of the night, stupid," Sanji hissed, elbowing him again just because he could. "And you're back to normal. Shut up and go away." He was tired, and not really feeling like helping the moron regain his bearings. That was what 'back to normal' meant, and Zoro's tacit permission to be in Sanji's hammock had run out as well.

Not that he wouldn't get it again if he asked, but it didn't take a genius to tell that _that_ wasn't happening any time soon.

Zoro finally got the message, and with a muttered curse and a ripping sound climbed out of the hammock. Curiosity got the better of Sanji's resolution to look away, and he let out a snort. Because of course, they hadn't expected the boys to turn back to adult size so early, and they'd gone to bed with clothes that were turning out to be way too tight. It was a wonder that Zoro had even managed to breathe in that T-shirt, but now that he was moving it was ripping apart, just like the trousers that had once hung loose on his childish hips.

Zoro cursed in annoyance and ripped the remnants of the clothes off, unknowingly giving Sanji a very nice view of how much he'd grown. "Oi, shithead," he barked, his voice somewhat lowered for his crewmates' sake, "clothes?"

"Storage room," Sanji groaned, and turned on his side to clearly indicate that the conversation was over and let me sleep, dumbass, or I'll kick your naked ass and enjoy it much more than you'd be comfortable with.

* * *

Zoro walked to the storeroom on automatic pilot mode, not bothered in the slightest by his own nakedness. It was a nice night, and the warm breeze would have felt pleasant on his skin if he'd noticed it. But as it was he stared straight ahead, in a daze, unaware of his surroundings.

There were too many things in his head, too many memories, all jumbled together and he would have to concentrate to make everything make sense again, but that was not what mattered at the moment. Not the mess that was his memory, not the clothes he wasn't wearing or the fact that he'd woken up all snuggled up to the most annoying shithead he'd ever met. Nothing mattered at the moment but the path to the storage room, climbing on the stool to get to the higher shelves and finally getting his hands on the bundle that was a mix of his and Luffy's possessions. He discarded the hat and the carefully folded clothes without even looking at them, and reached for the Wadou Ichimonji. He clutched it with both hands, put his forehead on the hilt, and let out a long, heartfelt string of curses.

He'd forgotten. He'd been so certain that he would never forget. Her, that night, that sword and the reason it was his, the weight behind his determination. It had all been carved too deep in his mind for him to ever believe that he could be rid of the memory, even if he had wanted to.

And he'd gone and fucking forgotten. Wasted a month of his life trying to teach himself to kick (of all things; now he regretted not having really cut off his feet back in Little Garden) instead of striving towards his goal.

_Unforgivable._

He spent longer there than he cared to know, naked and on his knees in the storage room, clutching Kuina's sword against him like a lifeline, vowing over and over to himself, to her, to _sensei_, that he wouldn't forget again, ever, until the tears of shame were dry on his cheeks and the words he was whispering made no sense to him anymore.

When he felt a bit calmer he rose, got dressed and attached the three swords back where they belonged. The pendants weren't that important really, but he reached to touch them all the same, and felt a little better when they clinked against each other.

Only then did he remember his current allegiance, and he grabbed Luffy's things before sliding back down in the bunk room. As expected, his captain had turned back as well, but that wasn't stopping him from using Chopper as some sort of breathing fluffy plushie. It brought an indulgent smile on Zoro's lips as he put the clothes on the deserted couch and the straw hat on top of them, immediately in sight of anyone going from the hammocks to the stepladder.

It was so early in the morning that it was still night really, still time to make himself a comfortable sleeping spot on the ground, but at the moment he felt like he didn't deserve to sleep ever again, and if he did he'd have to face her, and he wasn't quite ready for that either. So he went back to the storage room, spent the next five minutes dragging all his weights onto the stern deck, and started catching up on thirty days of neglected training.

* * *

Sanji was leaning on the railing, slowly smoking a cigarette as a personal reward for a job (preparing breakfast before a now adult and famished Luffy awoke) well done when from the corner of his eye he saw Usopp sliding down the mast. It was uncharacteristically early for the long-nose to be up when he wasn't on watch (and the nice thing with being docked at an island was that watch duty was temporarily suspended), but apparently there had been some kind of repairs to do in the crow's nest.

"Marines!" Usopp told him when he was safely back on the deck. "They've caught up to us! Three ships-"

Sanji ignored the details as he pulled contentedly on his cigarette for a moment. _Merry_ had been properly docked and wasn't immediately recognizable from a long distance, and all he could see at the moment was a big black dot at the horizon. There was time to consider. Ah, Marines. Always in the right place at the right time.

Too fucking bad for them. He hated doing the swordsman a favor, but three ships were just what they needed at the moment.

"The seaweed-head is on the stern deck," he told Usopp who was halfway through the process of talking himself into a panic. "Go tell him the good news. I'll get Luffy."

Usopp blinked at him. "I understand you want them to see the great role model you are in action," he said with exaggerated care,obviously not wanting to get kicked again, "but is it really worth waking them up? It could get nasty, and we don't really-"

"They turned back in the middle of the night," Sanji answered, rolling his eyes. For a moment Usopp seemed about to say something, then he spotted Sanji's expression and decided that maybe his smart comment would be better left for a more appropriate time - like whenever the cook wasn't looking at him like cold-blooded murder was a perfectly acceptable answer to smart comments.

When Sanji got to Chopper's hammock, he was mildly impressed that the reindeer was still breathing, considering how tightly Luffy was clutching him. The drool that came steadily out of Luffy's mouth and was dripping on Chopper's face couldn't be that comfortable either, but somehow the doctor was still sleeping. They made a rather cute tableau and he hated to spoil their sleep with news of an attack, but it was probably better to get rid of the Marines as long as they were far away and hadn't had time to tell their Headquarters of the location of the Straw Hat pirates.

While he wasn't quite as bad as Zoro, waking Luffy up was always something of a trial, but thankfully Sanji had found out the best method early on. He bent down slightly. "If you don't wake up now all the meat will be gone," he whispered in Luffy's ear, and pulled back immediately after, only narrowly avoiding the brutal uprising of his captain's head.

"SAVE ME SOME MEAT!" Luffy shouted. Chopper, woken as much by the movement as the noise, winced, and was about to say something when Luffy's eyes widened and his mouth made a silent 'oh' for a second, then-

"Hathathathathathathathathatwheresmyhat?"

Sanji sighed and wordlessly pointed towards the couch, where Luffy's hat and clothes had somehow migrated during the night. He had no doubt who was to blame (or thank, maybe) for that, but stopped the thought before he could think that Zoro's loyalty to Luffy was, well, _cute_. He'd been using the word way too much these past weeks, even if it was only in his mind.

Only when the straw hat was back where it belonged did Luffy notice that the clothes he was wearing were rather tight, and he looked curiously between Sanji and Chopper.

"What..." he said, a tight look of concentration on his face. Then realization came. "Oh! I remember! But it's all confused..." Sanji sighed. He didn't want to waste time with recollection at the moment.

"Luffy. Marines outside. Then breakfast. Then thinking."

His captain seemed to agree.


	9. Chapter 8: Semblance of Normalcy

This was nice, Sanji thought as he stood in the middle of a closing circle of Marines. Fighting was a good outlet for frustration, and lately there had been too much of the latter and not enough of the former: now that he had his hands free, so to speak, he intended to milk the fight for all it was worth.

The only thing on which he ever seemed to agree with Zoro was how fast they could get rid of that sort of small fry, but he had already prepared breakfast and was in no hurry at the moment. So Sanji moved at a leisurely pace, infinitely slower than his top speed. He dealt with the Marines one by one, paying special attention to each of them instead of using any of the techniques meant to deal with a large group. It was nice being able to take his time for once.

The distant cries of "Gomu Gomu no silly-attack-of-the-week" and "Drop your sword and turn around slowly, Roronoaaaaaaaargh" were almost as enjoyable as the feeling of his feet connecting indiscriminately against flesh, wood or steel, he noticed with mild surprise. It wasn't that he wasn't strong enough to take care of a confrontation when the two other main fighters were down, of course. He could have sunk the three Marine ships without breaking a sweat and still found the time to go pick flowers for Nami-_swan_ and Robin-_chwan_ before the rest of the crew was awake. Nevertheless, at some point he'd grown used to having people by his side, who could handle themselves as well as he could. Their presence made the fight... comfortable, maybe.

He lost himself in the fight, trying to see how slow he could get while still being in total control of the situation, or how fast he could throw three people overboard with separate kicks.

After what seemed like only a few seconds, he dodged a clumsy Marine-issue katana and found himself looking straight at Luffy. His captain was perched on the railing of the ship, apparently in the middle of a rather one-sided conversation with Zoro. A quick glance around told Sanji that the two other ships were sinking fast, and he was the last one who still even had to deal with terrified privates.

Maybe he'd been wrong in his assumption that the two of them would need the catharsis as much as he did.

"Sanjiiiii! Hurry up, I want to go back and have breakfast already!"

Sanji sighed a little, and dodged the attack of yet another moron waving a stick around. He didn't feel like hurrying up, so instead of assuming a real battle stance he danced a few steps away from the last attackers, removed his jacket and tie and tossed them in Luffy's general direction. "You go ahead. Everything that's for breakfast is on the table, so you can start without me, but remember to leave some for everyone."

From the corner of his eye he saw Luffy reach out to grab his clothes in mid-air and nod vehemently, then get up and grab Zoro by the waist for the short Gomu Gomu trip back. For a moment, Sanji considered reminding him that the fridge was out of bounds, but Luffy had selective hearing when it came to food, and before the cook could decide if it was worth it he was the only pirate left on the ship. Oh well. It was a small mercy anyway, and they could still replenish their supplies even if Luffy emptied the galley in his hunger.

He turned around and gave the bewildered survivors a large grin.

One thing that could be said for Marines was that unlike the average pirate, their sense of justice generally prevented them from running away even when the fight was lost. It made them acceptable training dummies, if nothing else.

Afterwards the swim back to Merry took a bit more time than Sanji had anticipated: he'd somewhat miscalculated the distance, and not functioning at full power was more tiring than going all out, so he swam lazily, enjoying the cold water on his skin. His clothes were soaked and his shoes heavy, but everything he was wearing had taken much worse than a little seawater and it was past time for him to do his laundry anyway.

* * *

As he'd escaped unscathed from the fight (barely a warm up, really, even the captain who had supposedly been a famous bounty hunter in his spare time), Zoro had expected to go back to his training as soon as he was done with breakfast.

Judging by Chopper's expression, he wasn't going to be that lucky. Both he and Usopp were extremely disappointed that they hadn't been able to witness the changing, and while Usopp could do nothing but mourn about his lack of luck, the doctor seemed to have decided that it was absolutely necessary that he did a full check-up on Luffy and Zoro.

Luffy seemed to think it was funny. Zoro, feeling like this was nothing but an excuse to use them as test subjects, tried to protest. He really did, but Chopper's patented puppy look made him feel oddly guilty for his thoughts, and he gave up.

Which was why captain and first mate were now standing in their underwear in the galley, waiting for a full inspection of their physical condition. At the moment Chopper was pulling various bits of Luffy's skin to check up on their elasticity (which was rather pointless since he'd kept his powers even as a kid, but Chopper was nothing if not thorough) as Zoro fidgeted without quite knowing why. He wasn't modest by nature, and it wasn't like they hadn't all seen one another naked a dozen times. Yet deep down a small voice was telling him that Sanji probably wouldn't appreciate partial nudity in his kitchen, and he really didn't want to anger the cook--

What the hell? Zoro didn't care about what the cook thought, that was the core of their interaction or something. Maybe there was something wrong with him.

He tried to dismiss the thought by looking around to see something he could train with until Chopper finished examining Luffy. Ah, there. A nice heavy pan would be perfect to increase his finger strength, and the idea of using kitchenware as training material was somewhat appealing. Served the bastard right for messing with Zoro's mind.

He was inching closer to the pan, slowly so that Chopper wouldn't notice and scold him or something, when Luffy pulled away from the doctor.

"Zoro? Your turn."

Damn. Did he really have to go through this? He was feeling quite alright, thank you... but Chopper wouldn't leave him alone until he surrendered, so he stepped up and stood straight, hoping against hope that this wouldn't take too long.

Chopper was busy examining the long scar on Zoro's chest when the door of the galley opened on a very wet Sanji. Something in Zoro tried to send a signal that this was good news, but he stepped on it with all his mental weight and glared extra hard to compensate.

The cook rolled his eyes at him and left the room without a word. Zoro ignored the anxious disappointment in the pit of his stomach.

After what seemed like an eternity, the young doctor finally declared, as expected, that Zoro was in perfect health. Sighing in relief, Zoro put his clothes back on and made to exit the galley.

No such luck.

"Now, about your memories..." Chopper started.

* * *

When he was finally free to go, Zoro decided that he should give Chopper's suggestion a shot. He wasn't usually prone to self-introspection, but he was willing to try anything that could help him get rid of the disturbing feeling that he'd known and liked Sanji for ever.

He jumped off the ship and went to the edge of the beach to sit under a tree, far enough not to hear the noise coming from _Merry_ but still in sight, just in case something happened.

Chopper had instructed them to spend some time trying to sort out their memories by chronological order to make sure that nothing was amiss, so he closed his eyes and remembered.

_He was five and running up a hill to be in time for dinner, and stumbled on a stone. His knees were so scratched that the had to be bandaged, but he never cried._

_Then he was five and a half (the six months were important) and eating ants on a dare. They didn't taste as bad as he'd expected, and he ate a few more when no one was looking._

_Then he was six, waking up to the sound of waves in a room he didn't know_-- He frowned. No, that had come later.

_He was six and stared in awe as the enemies were kicked overboard or sent sprawling against hard wood by an amazingly fast_-- No.

_He was six and sitting in the galley of Going Merry with a mug in front of him and the occasional splash of a dish eased in the water a bit too brutally, and he was as safe as he would ever_--

No, dammit!

Zoro took a deep breath. Maybe he shouldn't try so hard. Nothing interesting had happened in his sixth year of life anyway, it was no use trying to remember details. Anyway, what really mattered was the order in which things had happened to him, not the age he'd been.

He closed his eyes again and remember standing confidently on top of the hill before he went to take his first dojo plate.

_The master was nice but underestimated him, making Zoro fight against a girl. Zoro smirked and proved that he wasn't as overconfident by using as many weapons as he could._

_Pain. Shame. But at least he had a place to stay at now, something to do._

_Then it was Kuina and Kuina again, looking down at him after every victory, that taunting smile on her lips as she told him he was weak and would never manage to beat her._

_Until she finally admitted he would, but for the wrong reasons. The promise under the stars, that even he understood to mean nothing more than 'I will beat you someday' and 'I will always be a step ahead of you'. At least until the next day, and the fearful look on the boys' faces as they told him what had happened. Death tasted bitter, and suddenly the promise had a whole different meaning._

Sensei_ kept telling him that the slowest way was often the surest, but Zoro never believed that. Days of training blurred together until he felt ready, and with one last prayer left the dojo in search of the one man who could help him keep his promise._

_The next months were cold and hunger and disappointment upon disappointment, until he found that all those morons flaunting their lame bounty posters had their use, too. He still got disappointed every time he entered a town and found no clue as to where the hawk-eyed man was, and still went cold and hungry sometimes, but it wasn't so bad._

_Then he met Johnny and Yosaku and for a while things were more animated, more fun. Running from town to town. Standing back and smirking as they tried to fight the prey of the week, until he decided they couldn't take him and finished the job in their stead. Long evenings spent drinking in the bar, and that one time when they'd somehow convinced him to follow the bar girl who'd been watching him all night to her room. Not really a dear memory, but one nonetheless, because according to Johnny and Yosaku that made him a Man._

_Then he separated from them because he felt he was wasting too much time waiting for them, and there was more cold and hunger, until he stumbled in that restaurant and had to interfere because he'd always hated people who picked on those who were weaker for entertainment._

_Threats and a bargain._ I'll show them. _Then worse hunger than he'd ever known before, and thirst and aching muscles, all combining into a rapidly descending spiral towards madness. And then..._

_A silly hat and eyes full of a determination Zoro had never seen in anyone else, his behaviour in that Marine stronghold so casual that it had to be fake, but it wasn't. Finding out that having someone fighting by his side wasn't that bad after all. Being with Luffy was an entirely different sort of madness, one that Zoro had found he didn't dislike._

It was only at that point that Zoro noticed how tense his body had become with the recollection of the previous events, and how just remembering the day he'd decided that pledging his loyalty on his own terms was better than death relaxed him. He would have happily taken a nap at that point, because it was rather nice to remember good events once in a while, but forced himself to keep going.

He easily reached the point when he'd fallen unconscious after an attack from behind, then had to concentrate. That was when he'd woken up, disoriented and confused in Merry. That was when he'd seen Sanji take care of the other pirates, and been so impressed. It wasn't really surprising, when he thought about it. After all, he could accept, however grudgingly, that the bastard was strong. It was normal that it made an impression on him at such a young age.

Still, it annoyed Zoro that he'd remembered so little of life as a Straw Hat pirate that he'd... clung to the cook like that, and for so long. But that was in the past and didn't matter half as much as the fact that despite the meditation, his memories of Sanji now seemed older than those of Kuina unless he forced himself to remember that they weren't, and he wondered what he could do to put that right ag--

"Oi, shithead, you ever been told that doing the dishes was excellent coordination training?"

The command didn't bother to go through Zoro's brain. The next second he was up, on guard, the Sandai Kitetsu pointing at the cook and his left hand reaching for Yubashiri.

* * *

Sanji blinked at the swordsman's reaction. Usually it took a bit more provocation than that to get Zoro to draw his sticks on him, and the glare he was throwing was usually reserved for their most serious fights...

But hey, Sanji was not a man to back down from a challenge.

"Someone's jumpy," he commented with a nasty smirk, not moving except to suck on his cigarette insolently. _I don't feel threatened by you_ was a message Zoro seemed to get much faster than... others.

He felt a sort of grim satisfaction when the sole of his shoe connected with the crossed swords for the first time in way too long. This was how things should be. He'd been feeling a bit edgy even after the earlier fight (possibly that had to do with the shock of finding Zoro more than half-naked in his kitchen, though), and no number of Marines could compare to this. These fights were familiar and nasty and exhilarating, and there was no other stake to them than pride.

It was also the best way to put the past month behind them, and Zoro had to feel that too because his strokes were sharper, faster, harsher than usual, and in one or two occasions Sanji really felt like he was fighting for his life, and he had to use some of his best moves and this, not Marines or swimming, this was the work-out he'd needed.

But there was never enough time. Someone always had to interrupt when it got _good_, dammit, and this time it was Luffy, whose cry of "I NEED LUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNCH!" echoed through the whole island and forced Sanji to stop and hurry back to the ship, because with all of that he'd forgotten that the dishes needed to be done and he hadn't even started on lunch and damn, he hated having to hurry like that.

* * *

Zoro felt marginally better after that, and when he dragged himself to lunch after being called three times there wasn't a shred of discomfiture in him when the cook snapped that since he never did anything to help he could at least be polite enough to be on time at meals. Now only the shame of having forgotten Kuina remained, and that meant training, training, and more training. It was in no way an expiation, but it got him a bit closer to his goal, and he couldn't think of anything better to do.

But of course, Nami had a different idea. Why was it, he wondered as he tried to tune her out and failed, that all of his crewmates had decided to not leave him alone today?

"...and I thought you might want to see them," she was saying, and even though she was behind him he could tell there was that horrible self-satisfied smirk on her face. That boded ill. He didn't know what she was talking about, but it was probably safer for him to check it out, so he let go of the weights -carefully, he didn't want Usopp to get on his case as well- and turned to her.

The first picture she showed him was one of Luffy, who was so himself that it really didn't matter that he'd been ten years younger at the time. His features were a bit rounder maybe, his clothes different, and he wasn't wearing his hat, but his posture as he sat on the figurehead staring at the horizon was terribly familiar.

Zoro knew better than to think it would be the same for him, and indeed, it wasn't. Over thirty days, the witch had made him dress in a selection of the most ridiculous clothes she'd thought of. And if she had one talent, he contemplated as he was forced to be reminded of outfit after shameful outfit, it was imagination in her nastiness.

He was just deciding that this was a big conspiracy to make his life miserable and that he wouldn't fall for it when she showed him the last picture.

Which had been taken in the males' quarters at night, and showed Zoro shamelessly snuggling up to the cook with a content look on his face. This couldn't be allowed to go on, he decided on the spot, and asked to see the others again.

Nami made the mistake of handing him all the pictures at once. He took them with both hands with a relieved sigh, and tore them apart in one swift move. Then again, and again, and again, until there was nothing but fragments of coloured paper in his hands. Then he went to the railing and threw them overboard, just to be sure.

Nami didn't even twitch as he did it, and it was only when he turned back from the railing that he noticed the small smile on her face.

"Those were copies of very valuable pictures, Zoro. Fifty-nine of them, five hundred bellies each, so you've just robbed me of twenty-four thousand and five hundred bellies," she told him sweetly. Zoro stared at her in horror. How could he have believed for a moment that she'd be naive enough to let him have the only copies?

"Also," she went on, "since you destroyed them on purpose, I won't be as nice to you as I usually am, so the interest will be_ toichi_. On the usual 300, of course."

"DAMMIT, WOMAN, ARE YOU A PIRATE OR A YAKUZA?"

"DON'T YOU DARE INSULT NAMI-_SAN_, YOU UNGRATEFUL BASTARD!"

Oh great, just what this conversation needed.

"Don't get involved, shithead," he barked at the irate cook. "This isn't your business."

"Anyone who threatens a lady in my presence is my business, shitty seaweed," Sanji shot back, looking oddly threatening despite the pink apron and wooden spoon. "And we all know you're feeling incredibly stupid, so don't take it out on us. Dickhead."

"What the fuck do YOU know?" he snarled, angry beyond words. How the hell could the moron understand what it meant to him that he'd forgotten, wasted so much time, made such a fool of himself?

Sanji raised an eyebrow at him but didn't answer, and just headed back to his kitchen. Zoro would have congratulated himself on winning the argument, if not for the strange expression he'd seen on the cook's face as he left.

The impression that this wasn't over nagged at him until dinner. It was a nice dinner though, with none of the foods Zoro particularly disliked, and to Luffy's delight the cook had prepared a chocolate fondue for dessert, with fruits and sponge cake to dip in it. Zoro was almost relaxing when Usopp nudged him in the ribs.

"Oi, Zoro, stop hogging the raspberries."

Zoro managed not to freeze for more than half a second, and he did give Usopp the bowl of raspberries that had been sitting next to his elbow since... well, since Sanji had put it there. For a moment he wondered if there had been a message there, but he dismissed the thought as soon as it came. The earlier meditation was just making him think too much.

Still, it kept bothering him all through his evening training. It raised the point that the least the cook knew was what Zoro had told him. And he'd told him a fucking lot, young and careless that he'd been.

And, yeah, to the shithead's credit, he'd done his best, in the circumstances. Zoro had to admit that Sanji had helped, in a way, even if he didn't know much of Zoro's past history.

No one did but Zoro himself, and he was forced to face the fact that he had forgotten. Not through any will of his own, of course. But no matter how hard he tried to convince himself that it wouldn't happen again, who was to say that there wasn't another Devil Fruit out there that made people forget about their past and goals? It was possible that he'd forget again, and he couldn't allow that to happen. He just couldn't let the memory of her fade away again. One time could be written off as an accident (even though it was still his fault for being too careless and not fast enough), but what would a second time mean?

Fuck, he needed a drink.

* * *

One very nice thing about Luffy's permanent hunger was that he made doing the dishes a lot easier. All the plates were almost clean before Sanji even put them in the sink, and it only took a minute or so to wipe out what little chocolate remained in the pan. It left a lot of room for thoughts, such as 'what the fuck were you trying to prove with that dessert'?

Of course it was easy to tell himself that it was a coincidence, and it would have been if he hadn't gone through the trouble of going back to town to buy all the ingredients for it when there were so many other things he could have prepared.

So maybe he'd been trying to tell the moron something. It was nothing but an extension of their usual relationship, really. _Look, I know more about you than you wanted me to. I'm the one with the advantage._ Sanji snorted. Now he was the one acting like a kid.

For some reason he didn't feel like leaving the kitchen just yet, so he started on delicate pastries for the morning, as he'd done so often in the past month while Zoro drank his milk in silence. Maybe that was why he barely twitched when the door opened on the very seaweed-head that Sanji was trying so hard not to think about.

This time though, the swordsman headed straight to the wine rack, and Sanji made the conscious decision not to protest the theft of his alcohol (unless it was this bottle, or that one) because after all, Zoro hadn't touched the stock for a month, and there was still time to buy some more here anyway.

Having picked his bottle (thankfully not either of the ones Sanji had been ready to protect), Zoro went to the spot he'd sat at almost every night for the past thirty days, and started drinking silently.

It was probably only out of the fast habit they'd created during these last weeks, and would hopefully fade soon enough, but for once the swordsman's presence didn't make Sanji uncomfortable or tense at all. So the cook chose to focus on his preparations instead of confronting him.

"I didn't kill her," Zoro suddenly volunteered. Sanji blinked. Starting a serious conversation when there was no need to was a breach of the code. Especially on this topic, which the man had always kept tight within. Sanji kept kneading his dough and didn't say anything, but most of his attention turned towards the slumped figure behind him. He wasn't Luffy. He couldn't just shrug off his own curiosity.

"The girl," Zoro explained after it was clear that Sanji wasn't going to participate any more than strictly necessary. "Kuina. It was an accident. She slipped in the stairs. I wasn't even there."

And it would have been all, except that it wasn't. Accidents happened. No matter how dear the girl could have been to Zoro, it wasn't enough to warrant the scared, lost look Sanji had seen on the kid's face after his dreams, or the way he had clung to Sanji every night. Or even the fact that Zoro was here and telling him about it. Sanji let go of the dough for the moment and turned around, raising his eyebrow expectantly at Zoro. _Get to the point or get out of my kitchen._

The shitty swordsman glared at him for a moment, and Sanji tensed as he saw a hand reach for the white handle at his side.

"I made her fight me with her katana," Zoro said, looking intently at Sanji as he clenched the Wadou Ichimonji in his hand. "She never used it. And then she went to get her whetstone. And she slipped." He took a long sip out of the bottle after that, clearly indicating that the story was over.

Sanji wasn't quite sure how to react to this confession. It didn't really connect to anything Zoro-related, except for his favourite katana. It didn't explain his drive to become the absolute best, or his thickheaded determination. All it told Sanji was that, really: there had been a girl, and she'd died, and Zoro felt guilty for it.

But of course, "it's not your fault" wouldn't cut it. However much they had, urgh, _bonded_ when Zoro was... not really himself, it didn't mean that the dynamics between them had changed so much that the seaweed-head would look to Sanji for his absolution. And even if he'd wanted to, Sanji couldn't have given it anyway. The way the story was told, it really wasn't Zoro's fault, unless he'd spread oil on the stairs and purposely put her sword in such a state that she'd had no other choice but to sharpen it. Which Sanji could only assume he hadn't.

It wasn't Zoro's fault, just like Zeff's missing leg wasn't Sanji's fault because he'd never asked for it. It had been the old man's decision all the way. Sanji had chosen to be grateful for the sacrifice made, but strictly speaking he wasn't responsible. He'd always known he could have walked away from the Baratie anytime, and the shitty old man would have had no moral high ground to stop him.

Yeah, right. Sanji knew as well as anyone that all logic failed when it came to gut-wrenching guilt. It's not your fault meant nothing, no matter how hard you tried to convince yourself or how often you were told. Anyway, Sanji's compassion was reserved for ladies.

"You made a _girl_ fight you with real swords?" he snarled instead. "You dumb oaf." That moron, who Sanji grudgingly acknowledged was better with his swords than most men could ever dream to be, challenging a woman to a fight? What had he been thinking? Zoro looked back up at him like he was trying to size him up, to decide if whatever he had to say was worth the potential fight. Sanji glared, regretting that he hadn't used the last month to kick some manners and respect of the ladies inside the brat. You never knew. Maybe it would have worked.

"Two thousand and one fights," Zoro finally said, looking so straight at him that it seemed like he was looking through him. "Two thousand and one defeats. Remember that, cook. Women are only weak and frail and whatever because they don't _try_ to be strong."

He got up then, and Sanji turned back to his dough, knowing the conversation was over. Without a fight, which was a rare occurrence. The door to the galley opened, and then, almost carelessly but with a hint of a threat, Zoro said "I never told Luffy", and was gone.

Sanji closed his eyes and sighed. The clear message was_ you keep your mouth shut about this_. Probably Zoro didn't even know why he'd told him. Sanji certainly didn't know. And while he knew he should have felt somewhat good that the moron had lowered his defences enough to tell him something that seemed so important to him, all he really wanted to do was kick him in his seaweed head for implying that Sanji was a stupid gossip.

It was a relief that this, at least, hadn't changed.

** END**

Note:_Toichi_ is an interest system that charges ten percent every ten day. It takes ten times that, that is a hundred days, for the debt to double. Within a year, it has been multiplied by eight.


End file.
